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What Are the Advantages/Disadvantages of Game Schools?
GameCareerGuide has up an article looking at the pros and cons of going to a 'game school'. There are a number of programs in schools across the country that now focus on game development, game design, and creating game art. Are they worth it? "First, and probably most importantly, game-specific schools do not typically offer a comprehensive undergraduate education. Some game programs, as well as art schools, will actually encourage young students to go elsewhere for their undergraduate education and return to game school for more advanced training. I've literally heard that out of the mouths of art school faculty: Go get your bachelor's degree at a traditional university, then come back and apply to art school after you've learned a little more about the world. And while it's true that not everyone is cut out for a traditional education in the humanities or sciences, many many people who initially fight it find it invaluable after the fact. "
You learn how to tighten up those graphics!
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Do you want to be a game programmer? Are you fucking insane?
Long hours. Low pay. Constant threat of unemployment. Lousy managers. Corrupt company owners. Hell on Earth.
A degree from a game school is like a degree from DeVry, except with less real-world applicability.
You won't find Digipen grads running game companies. You'll find them slaving away for lousy managers and corrupt bosses. Get a business degree and hire a bunch of coders to write your game. Hell, pitch in whenever you have the chance. Whatever you do, don't waste your time trying to be a game developer.
Advantage: You prove you're an idiot without having to say a word.
Disadvantage: No one in their right mind will ever hire you.
I have nothing to say.
Game development programmes aren't really treated all that seriously by any of the developers I've worked for. It might help in addition to a degree in a related field but, real world experience will serve you a lot better.
Get a 4-year degree with a piece of paper. It really does mean something, even if you go on to do nothing with it. For example, if you want in to a game school, get a degree in CS or math or something halfway relevant and then do it.
If your sector of work ever fails, that degree shows a potential employer in another field a few things: first that you stuck something out for four years (which, in a volatile game industry, you may not have the chance to do, or may not choose to do in order to 'get ahead'). Secondly it gives you a well-rounded foundation. You learn as much in class as you do out of class in the social interactions between your classmates and the dynamics of the university, even if you live off campus.
In short, an accredited piece of paper means a lot, and not just in your field. Go for it!
FTB: I've literally heard that out of the mouths of art school faculty: Go get your bachelor's degree at a traditional university, then come back and apply to art school after you've learned a little more about the world.
It's actually surprising for me to see this and I think it puts the gaming schools in a much better light than I had put them in earlier.
I've got a near-16 year old nephew who seems to think that he can skirt around the parameters of traditional education and still come out on top working in the gaming field. I can't blame him though... I also have a brother who doesn't seem to know that there is a not-so fine line between being a genius and being a little smarter then most kids of the same age but being a lazy unmotivated slob. He's all too convinced that things will fall together when they need to. If only he knew that these things needed to start to fall together a few years ago.
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instead of 85% of your college buddies being addicted to WoW, it will be more like 99%!
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I would figure out what happens if you don't want to program games anymore. Will it help you in anything else you want to do? If you have a CS degree (as an example) and don't want to do CS related things, the CS degree still shows that you have skills in logic/math/theories/etc. and can easily be used in other places.
A random idea and a sack of money will get you a lot further than the people with great ideas lots of experience and no money. And I'm not saying this to be flippant, they are called executives and in large part they are running the industry.
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Look, most people who want to code games are gamers. They're young, have little motivation to learn hard topics (by hard I mean solid, such as advanced math and sciences, not necessarily difficult). Heck, many have little motiviation to do anything but play games. They're good at them, and think they can do a better job. They are also enticed by shortcuts. I have bad news for those people:
There are no reliable shortcuts in life.
Okay, just to clairfy - dropping out of college and starting a multi-billion dollar company is possible, but not probably. You'd be better off playing the lotto - that doesn't require as much work, and gets you similar odds*. Being successful means knowing _all_ the things than nobody else takes the time to learn. Anybody can learn the fun stuff, the really successful people know the un-fun stuff and that's what gives them an edge against the fun-stuff-only people. Just in case is isn't clear yet, in this industry there are no points awarded for being able to play your video game well.
*playing the 146M:1 powerball lotto twice a week for 5 years gets you to 280k:1 chance to win a comfy retirement (typically $10M-100M lump sum payout). There are 300M people in the US, so there would need to be over 1000 college-drop-out 8-figure CEOs that invested less than $1000 and 15 minutes a week in their business to make the lotto a worse option.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I attend UCF, about 5 miles up the road. We're one of the biggest universities in the country, so we really dwarf Full Sail, but the proximity affords us a nice bunch of gamers to pick on for the local LAN centers. "Stick to making these things," is effective trash-talk.
Allow me to preface this by saying that some people who are motivated can go to these schools, absorb the knowledge around, and end up doing very well. These people work hard and get the most out of the school they are paying for.
Now that that is out of the way, for everyone else, they will end up having their 'gaming college' amount to little more than time served at a school. I have attended these schools which turned into a game school while I was there (CIS/CSC for me). TFA points out some truths, but I only want to focus on something that afflicts many technology focused schools, but game design programs even more.
These kids are lazy. Your average game degree student has a basic knowledge of computing principles, may have tried coding/art, and is immersed in geek/nerd culture/lifestyle. They go to school only with an interest in games, thinking they want to do what they love. I will always support that, but you have to back up your passion for games with a passion to make games for a living and most completely lack the latter. Countless students attended class for a couple semesters and once the coding or advanced modeling classes came around, the classes were empty. These students elected to miss class to play games all the time. They have gaming machines on campus where you can play games on break. I would constantly find kids who should be in the class I was attending on these machines.
Anything of worth for these students meant little to them. They think they can go to school, learn how to draft a Game Design Doc and send that off to publishers and then wait for the call where someone offers them millions to create their game.
Color me a troll, but these students were lazy and had no ambition to actually do or learn anything. They were generally delusional about what working in the game industry entailed and the staff at the school did little to educate them.
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Sure, there are PLENTY of kids who came to the school because they thought if they played game, they could make them and end up dropping out or unemployed. But I saw the same things when I was going for a C.S. degree at a "traditional" college, and anyone who's been to any type of college will tell you there are people who join that major who have the wrong expectations and should not be there.
Im not going to defend all "game schools", but I think it's unfair to put a blanket dismissal to all of them. If you find a good one (make sure they aren't just taking your money) and take it seriously, you can learn skills that will apply directly to getting a job. I have many friends with C.S. and other degrees from nice universities and state schools that have no real-world applicable knowledge.
In short, I have my degree from a "game school" and currently my major, "Visual & Game Programming", has a 100% hire rate among graduates - all employed at film (Pixar, ILM) or game companies (ArenaNet, Perpetual)
I have just finished a BA(Hons) in what is essentially game art development at a UK university. The games industry hires people based on portfolios, not qualifications, even programmers (I know very little about the programming side apart from a CS grad friend of mine who's going for gaming jobs) need demos quite often. Most game jobs apart from programming are art orientated, ie rigging, animating, modeling, texturing, environment /level design, audio. Artists are not hired because they have degrees, they are hired because they have great portfolios. My opinion is that game degrees really should be broken down into 3 categories: Game Design, Game Art, and Game Programming. Obviously some courses specialise more within these areas, ie graphics programming or animation but those are the 3 overall types you're likely to find listed.
The degree I was on was run by ex-games industry staff, all with years of experience and shipped titles, and plenty of firsthand knowledge of the way the game industry works and what game development is like. The problem is with game degrees is they simply are not going to be respected among non gaming employers (and among many gaming ones too) as a traditional academic degree in something like maths, business, CS etc. It'd be nice to think my games degree (I got a first)looked on paper as good as someone with a normal one, but im not kidding myself here.
As we know, not all degrees are created equal, and this is especially so with the current state of game degrees. Firstly, "game design" degrees are almost completely worthless(some many be more game art or game programming but use the "game design" tag mind you), most of them are run by academics with no industry experience or those with only a vauge sense of the realities of game development. The job "game designer" basically does not exist in a lot of companies, where the whole team either makes contributions to design or the leads of various departments take this job. Many companies have a lead designer, this is a postition you can apply for after maybe 4-5 years experience in some other part of development, probably more than 5 years though, or maybe an amazing career in QA. Either way, companies do not spend $5 million developing a game only to hand over the major design aspects of it to a graduate with a "game design" degree from a university whos lecturers haven't been near a game company.
Although I did a game degree myself, I expect it to count for nothing more than any other degree and probably a bit less in fact than if i'd have done a "proper" degree when looking for jobs at game companies. The adundance of shitty game degrees run by academics is still making a lot of developers suspicious of game degree grads despite the fact they're starting to hire quite a bit from the good courses out there.
Only do a game degree if you are 100% certain it's the only thing you're going to want to do and you have the willpower to make yourself employable in what is a very competetive industry. If you want to be a programmer, get a CS degree and try and specialise as much as possible in your modules/work in gaming orientated subjects ie pyhsics, gui, graphics etc. My uni has another game degree, a programming one, as I described earlier its run by academics with no games experience and is total shite - apparently they only learn C++ in the final year and its all java up till then (stop crying, now). Also, just because it's a good uni may not mean the course itself is any good. The quality of degrees varies massively within universities themselves, find out as much about the degree, what you'll learn, and who will be teaching you as you possibly can. Try and find graduates from the degree on forums / using some decent googling to see if any of them ended up actually working in the game industry.
Don't bother with game design degrees at all, no one hires game designers without experience, and most certainly no one hires game designers because they have "game design" degrees. If they did, it's be
*sigh* I hate when these threads show up. It always means I need to write long-winded rebuttals to people who don't understand that there are real gaming schools out there other than "Tighten Up The Graphics On Level 3" University.
I went to Full Sail for Game Development (programming), graduated with my bachelor's in 21 months. I'm currently working as a programmer for Volition, Inc. We also have grads from Digipen and Guild Hall working here.
The biggest thing to remember about a game school is this: a school doesn't teach you anything, it allows you to learn. If you don't put in the effort, you'll get nothing out of it. The people that got the most out of a game school, like myself, were working on side projects throughout their time at school. If you aren't motivated while in school to work on games, and don't take time to learn outside of school, then a game school isn't for you. Period.
Is it harder to get a job outside of games with a game degree? That depends. I went for programming, and I know that I am significantly more qualified for a non-game programming job now than I was before I went. That being said, there are still a lot of people out there who think all game schools are a joke, because they've only met the game school failures, or think all game schools are like the fly-by-night universities they see advertised on TV.
Full Sail's Game Development program not only has gaming-centric classes like Game Design Fundamentals, where you learn to write a design doc, and DirectX, but also calculus, linear algebra, and a mythology class. You learn what you would at a normal school, but what makes them great classes is that they're tailored towards games. In linear algebra, the focus is on matrices and matrix math. In our psychology class, some time is devoted to color theory and how different cultures perceive the meaning of colors.
Really, the bottom line is that if you are 100% sure you want to go into games, and you have the motivation to put in 80 hour weeks for months in school between side projects, classes, and school projects, a game school *may* be a good choice for you. Don't discount a good school just because its emphasis is on games.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
I tend to do interviews a lot at my company (a very large game company) for engineers, and here's some things I look at:
*Experience - The more the better. Someone who made a game at home I can look at before the interview and see how they code. Game experience is of course a plus and will get you more cred than the guy without it, but if you don't have any then you going out and working on a hobby game is a step above the other guy who has "likes games and dressing up like Final Fantasy" on his resume.
*Ability - You're going to do problems on the board. I like those better than just quizzing people on skills. Often its a design problem, because if you can code really well but someone else can't understand what the hell you did and has to debug it, that isn't so great. I'm interviewing more general programmer types though, so I'd imagine you'd get a more indepth interview on something like graphics.
*Education - Generally which piece of paper you have hanging on your wall at home isn't going to write code for me. Experience and ability are going to show me more than what diploma you have. Of course, we all have biases, so if your degree says MIT vs. some other guy who went to Joe Shmoe's School o' Gamin', I'm going for the MIT grad. That is, if you're both equal in the rest of the interview. I've hired from both backgrounds and found that its all down to the person. We've had guys from game schools blow away guys from top name schools, so its up to what you do once your foot is in the door.
Bottom line: What gets you hired is who you are and what you've done, not what school you went to.
Yup, I wanted to be a game developer. Yup, plenty of people consider me to be at least partly insane, though that was the case long before I got the idea to be a game developer. In any event, insane beats stupid and reactionary.
If you want to make games, you can generally count on long hours, especially if you end up in a smaller company. You do overrate the threat of unemployment however. As for lousy managers and corrupt owners, do you really think things are that much better in other fields? Anyway, while things are improving with respect to Death March hours, there is still quite a way to go. And even then, I doubt Crunch will ever completely go away. This is not a job you will want to stay in if you cannot handle crunch time at all.
As I see it, if your inclined to be a game programmer, your probably not inclined to get a business degree for any reason anyway. As for the thought that you will not find Digipen Grad's running companies, That is not entirely accurate. I know of at least one that someone is trying to get off the ground. But this is not the early to mid 1990's any more. Starting a successful game company up is a damn hard thing to do regardless of education.
A game specific school will manage to do two things for you.
First, it will make you reasonably employable in the game industry. It will not guarantee employment, but it can get you in the door. You will learn how to write code, and you will learn about things typically important to game development, such as 3d math. What it will not do is cover things that are not directly applicable, like compiler theory. I probably would have benefited from learning about things like shell programming. Your employability after outside of game development. As for the rest of it, well, I graduated in 1999 from the last 2 year program in Vancouver. Things will have changed in the curriculum since then.
The second thing it will do is it will leave you with a bunch of classmates who are also in the game industry. This does not help when finding your first job, but it does help when you want to find your second job.
A traditional university education is still very much worth having, and in many instances will serve you better than a narrowly defined one. If I were considering my education options for game development today, I would probably take a University degree specific to game programming over a game specific school. While both make you employable, I think that the university degree will make it much easier if you need to obtain a work visa for a job.
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My impression of DigiPen, after chatting with some graduates, is that they have a higher quality program than your average "game school." I can't speak for others like Fullsail, but it seemed like DigiPen actually did teach some fundamental computer science in addition to game specific stuff.
Most people think of a handfull of game schools, but there are now tons of crappy "game design" programs that can barely qualify as vocational training, much less a real study in computer science.
It also has a lot to do with how much you put into it. Most of the really brilliant people I know put a lot of extra effort into their educations. I wish I had done the same quite regularly.
I went to The Guildhall @ SMU, on the programming (software development) track. In fact, I was in the first graduating class. Since then I've worked at NCsoft, Sigil, Treyarch/Activision, and I just started on Monday at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment working on the Stargate Worlds MMO.
:) The hours are longer, and the salary can be less, but if you really like working on games, it's worth it.
My opinion is that you absolutely should go to a traditional university before you go into one of these programs. 4 years for a BS in CS will give you a good well rounded education you could apply to many programming jobs. Go to The Guildhall afterwards, and really get into the details of games, and with that experience you should then be able to get into the industry without much trouble.
Also be sure you really want to *work* on games, not just play them. It's not the same.