Getting Into the Games Industry Isn't Easy

simoniker writes "Lots of people want to be game developers — but it's not as simple as it sounds, as the Game Career Guide website explains in a new feature on game schools. Game professor Peter Raad: 'The number of job seekers who are seriously pursuing this field is staggering. It used to be the case that studios had the liberty to take bright, fresh, new employees with no specific game education background and train them in the methods, tools, and style that are required to make games. This is no longer true.'"

Comments

3am TV Meets 3pm /.

[eldavojohn]

I see these advertisements on television all the time at obscure hours of the morning. I sure would like to program games, that sounds like an interesting career. But I'd imagine the industry isn't as huge as they make it out to be and that there has to be a lot of frustrations/complications when trying to deal with licensing and hardware.

Why are these 1 year game programming schools a bad idea? Because they're highly specific. Even a 2 year technical college would give you more options than a tech school.

I am currently a developer but I went through a four year liberal arts program at a state University. I would recommend at least that experience and I value those classes above everything else I have learned. My number one fear is that people sign up for these game academies and make the mistake of investing a lot of money (through loans probably) while coming away with only the potential for working on games. This isn't a good decision, the results can be quite devastating.

I think that game emphasis should be something only sought after a four year degree at a respected university. If you don't have at least a bachelor's degree, you're setting yourself up for some big time risk.

Re:3am TV Meets 3pm /.

[p0tat03]

Moreover, I do not see game schools as providing coders with the education they need to be game programmers. We're talking about strictly intermediate, cursory knolwedge of C++, little to no education in algorithms & data structures... These guys are the VB programmers of the industry, their education covered none of the CS basics that are wholly necessary in apps as optimized and low-level as performance 3D apps. the only good coders I've seen come out of game schools are the ones that went in experienced programmers already, and drove themselves to learn everything on their own, the school can take little credit for that one.

I disagree with TFA that there are an astounding number of people trying to break into the industry. Game development is the 20-somethings' equivalent of "I wanna be an astronaut!". A lot of people say it, a lot of people fantasize about it, but mostly everyone has no hope in hell of doing it, nor would they stay if they got there. In terms of the real contenders, I think we're doing just fine.