What They Don't Teach You At Game Design School

The Guardian Gamesblog has a piece wondering out loud at what they do and don't teach in game design courses. From the article: "Games development requires expertise, and hiring graduates fast-tracks game development. Arguably, the release from the burden of training should allow developers to create new technologies. The industry has encouraged the university games courses, sending development kits to departments and staff to seminars. Since Abertay's flagship programme launched almost nine years ago, 165 games-related degrees have sprung up across the UK, a trend equalled in other countries around the world."

Comments

And your point is...?

[kaldrenon]

This article certainly raises a good question, but fails to answer it. If the game development programs offered at universities don't teach people how to design games, then what should be done about it?

The author says that "in most creative industries, the people from the outside have the brightest ideas and the cleverest approaches to solving problems." In effect, what he's saying is that for game development to flourish, the degree programs offered for game development should be ignored. Seems a little contrary to me.

Along with the fundamentals of programming, the core of a Computer Science degree, a game developer could need countless different references and sources, depending on the projects he intends to develop. A person making a football game, for example, needs to know more about sports, physics, and physiology, depending on the intended realism, whereas a person making an insightful and thought-provoking RPG with a deep storyline would want to do cultural, historical, or anthropological studies.

Because of the vast variety of secondary resources needed to develop certain different games, and because no one can really teach innovation, I say that all a game development degree can teach in order to assure its usefulness are the fundamentals of programming in modern video game design. A few more electives than other courses would certainly not be amiss, but learning to program is the only thing every game developer needs. Everything else depends on their objectives.