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Game-Related Education On the Rise At Colleges
The LA Times has a story about the increased interest in learning how to make video games amongst college students, and the subsequent rise in game-related education as the schools respond to that demand. Some programs are gaining legitimacy, while others do perhaps more harm than good. Quoting:
"The surge in interest has led schools to add games to their menu — but not always to the benefit of its students. Recruiters say they often see 'mills' that run around-the-clock sessions to quickly churn out as many students as possible. Other programs teach specific skills but not how games are pulled together. 'It's a very hot academic growth area,' said Colleen McCreary, who runs EA's university relations program. 'I'm very worried about the number of community colleges and for-profit institutions, as well as four-year programs, that are using game design as a lure for students who are not going to be prepared for the real entry-level positions that the game industry wants.'"
Speaking of game related education, a 2008 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a particular memory task, called Dual N-Back, may actually improve working memory (short term memory) and fluid intelligence (gF). This is an important finding because fluid intelligence was previously thought to be unchangeable. The game involves remembering a sequence of spoken letters and a sequence of positions of a square at the same time.
Read the original experimental study here.
There's a free open source version of the Dual N-Back task called Brain Workshop. Start practicing!
A good game-related course may cover things like:
* C & C++ .. and more.
* DirectX & OpenGL, Pixel shader programming
* Physics, Matrix transformations, quaternions
* Collision detection for various types of primitives and response
* Audio programming
* Game level design, storyboarding
* 3D object design and animation
* Performance optimization techniques including spatial partitioning, level of detail objects, fast motion blur, fast shadow mapping, and more
* World auto-generation, map editors and scripting
* Using game engine SDKs
* Writing for portability
* Developing for constrained systems (consoles) incl. fixed point maths
"Game-related" courses can be very involved and just as valid as any other CS degree teaching many of the same concepts and APIs. It's a shame that some people hear the word "game" and become dismissive.
As a game developer myself, Drawn to Life (2007) Lock's Quest (2008), and a student from a 'video game college', I can offer perspective to interested parties.
Any prospective student should know that it is very difficult to break into the gaming industry. Further, they need to ask themselves why they are attending generic college XYZ for video games. Specifically, what does this college offer and what are their job placement statistics? DigiPen regularly has job placement percentages in the high 90s within 6 months of graduation. Might I add that many of our professors have worked in the industry extensively? Who better to lecture on game networking, audio, physics, etc. than someone who has developed on triple A titles on all of the major consoles? I could spend ample time explaining how the first 2 years at DigiPen covers more than most Master's programs elsewhere in the country, but I digress.
The sad fact of the matter is that most collegiate programs do not have the expertise on the bench to be able to ACTUALLY help students get ready for the real world of video game programming. DigiPen graduates are more-often-than-not able to hit the ground running on most any platform or console.
To compound matters worse, real-time interactive simulations (aka video games or other simulators) are some of the most advanced computing that a developer can strive to code. Everything from memory management to networking has to be properly written for games. You are, in a sense, writing an entire OS on top of the underlying console dashboards. Quite a daunting task.
And to add just a bit more, what is it with Computer Science students who believe they can leave a typical college and hit the ground running with that perfect development job? I've spent a decade of internships, part-time jobs, multiple college degrees, etc. to get to the point where I can competently compete for a development job 'fresh out of college'. And yes, that means I was interning back in high school in development-type jobs.
Real video game colleges spend more time on advanced math (the stuff beyond calculus) and physics than discussing the best attack combo for the latest fighting game. Don't get me wrong, we play video games, but that is typically after an 80-120 hour work week writing code until we actually dream out our coding assignments to only wake up at 4 am to rewrite a memory manager, network engine, sound engine, shader, 3d model file format, etc.