Slashdot Mirror
Students Flock To GMU For a Degree In Video Game Design
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that officials at George Mason University are quickly finding out that they have vastly underestimated interest in the school's new bachelor's degree in video game design. 'We've been overwhelmed,' says Scott M. Martin, assistant dean for technology, research, and advancement at GMU. 'Our anticipated enrollment for the fall is 500 percent higher than we expected.' George Mason first offered the program last fall, when officials anticipated that it would enroll about 30 full-time students, but currently 200 students are enrolled and that number is increasing. Course titles under the program include 'History of Computer Game Design,' while other courses focus on computer programming, digital arts, and graphics and motion capture. Although many colleges offer courses and degrees in computer gaming in the United States, GMU offers the only four-year program in the DC area, an important market for gaming because serious games — those used to train military and special operations, doctors, and others who use simulators — are becoming a market force in the region because of the proximity to federal government centers."
My university's new "Cannabis Horticulture" degree has quadrupled university enrollment. Who would have thought that offering a degree in something that every teenager enjoys would drastically increase enrollment?
Not to worry though, George Mason. Within about a year they'll come to the harsh realization that *designing* videogames is a helluva lot different than *playing* videogames. Shortly after your first C++ midterm, your numbers should stabilize a bit.
On a related note, am I the only one who went into a programming degree realizing that C++ and Java programming are nothing like playing Halo 3? I mean come on, not even on Legendary.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The job market will be flooded with applicants in a few years. If you're going to college soon and want a job afterward, for love of god, pick a different path. It'll be just like CS was in the early 00's.
Or follow your dreams, or whatever. You can always work at Starbucks after you graduate.
This is clearly a result of the scouts merit badge for computer gaming.
Waiting for the other shoe to...
If the people are interested, and have the ability to create video games, they may find doing a normal computer science degree much much more rewarding. If you major in computer science, you then have the ability to produce video games, but you also have the rest of the software world to look for potenial jobs. I would most likely discourage a friend looking into this for those reasons. You may not have super video game specifics, but you have more than the foundation to get there.
for these kids to realize that the "glamorous" lifestyle of the video game designer is a lie. More like death marches galore, low pay, and shady companies.
Research this stuff first kids!
Sent from your iPad.
I don't know how it works in the US, as we have free education here in Finland. But the downside is that any given program has a certain number of people admitted per year, so enrollment is based on test results.
Are there no limits in the US? I mean, if they have 500% of the people they thought they would that's gonna be a bit of a pickle?
Just being curious here. :)
.: Max Romantschuk
After they realize it's not all fun and playing video games all day as "research", how many will flock away?
"What? You mean making videogames involves numbers? WHAT THE FUuuuuuuuuu..."
Hilarious, and it happens every time.
I feel sorry for the poor souls who'll have gone through four years of expensive 'education' to find that they really ought to have spent their time creating a decent series of demo games and applications instead. Oh well.
I'm disappointed to see an institution with as good a reputation as GMU creating what is ostensibly a vocational training program. Programs such as this prepare students for one and only one role in a specialized industry, instead of preparing them with a more well rounded education. Mores the pity too. I guess GMU wants to compete head to head with schools that advertise on G4.
There can't possibly be that many job openings in this field. This is about as silly as Unv Florida cranking out tons of degrees in marine biology when the reality is that there are less than 1000 of these specialty jobs in the US.
I know a ton of people that would love to think they're getting an education by being taught "video game design". Just because they've taken a few tests doesn't mean they can create a good video game, and no employer is going to take a degree in the place of experience and results to show for it.
If you owned a video game studio, who would you publish? Some guy who sat on his ass and got a degree in "video game design" from some no-name school? Or some guy that programmed and released for free an innovative game over the internet? I'd take the guy that has results. The degree is not going to help you, showing an employer you know what you're doing through a tangible product will get you hired. Bring a disc or web address to an interview, not a piece of paper.
I have a feeling that producing 200 new game designers per year will vastly outstrip any conceivable demand. I hope these kids get enough of a grounding in general software engineering to be able to find decent jobs elsewhere when the bulk of them get turned down for the relatively small number of openings.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'd say at least 75% of the people I knew in CS originally got interested in the subject at least partially because of video games. Most people eventually move on to other areas, either because they don't want to deal with the harder math and classes involved, they don't want to move to one of the few areas that has game development, or they read about how horrible the working conditions and want to have a life outside of that instead.
But most of us started there. If there had been a video game dev track at my college, I would have been in it. I practically was, with all of the 3d graphics coding and gaming capstone I took.
And the military sim market is definitely a growing poor man's gaming industry. It's where I ended up... and it's fun, but nowhere close to as "glamorous" as a real game shop. I remember begging out boss to let us even do light maps, but it just isn't a priority.
Is anyone getting flashbacks of that Westwood College advertisement where the two losers are "working" at a video game production house, and explain to their boss that they need to "tighten up the graphics on Level 3?" (They've taken down the copy on YouTube, otherwise I'd post a link.)
I wonder if this is going to be similar to what happened in the late 90s in the field of systems administration. During the dotcom run-up, salaries went pretty high for anyone who had even the slightest clue about computers. TONS of places were pumping out certified but unqualified network and systems admins, and we're still dealing with a lot of them now. Now given that this is an actual college, and they get a real degree out of the deal, it might not be as bad. And I'm sure the video game houses appreciate at least a minimal amount of training. From what I've heard, there are legions and legions of folks who don't mind the low pay and 100 hour work weeks just so they can say they design video games for a living. Providing a games publisher with a steady stream of newbies who are qualified beyond, "I like video games and want to be involved in "the business." (Replace video games with computers, and you get what happened during the dotcom boom.
He's not even kidding. I am a graduate of Full Sail's Game Dev program; alumni of one of the first classes through their BS program (which was one of the first Game Dev BS programs).
My class started with 80 students and ended with 20. They do find out eventually! (Perhaps $20,000-$40,000 later.)
Have there not already been two articles on slashdot about how game developers are forced to work 14 hour days, six days a week? Also, isn't that stuff all being offshored, or given to guest workers?
Because you can't both be taking classes for this degree program and do video game design and programming on the side?
And actually writing a small game, or really nicely implemented mod/addon/map/level/etc. for an existing game is probably included as a senior project, if not earlier. I'd highly doubt your coming out of that degree with nothing that could be used as some kind of portfolio.
Most software/electrical/mechanical 4 year degrees from a good school will have a senior project you can use for a portfolio piece to prove your basic competence when you graduate.
What degree you have (in the IT world at least) matters very little, except for your first job. After that it's all based on your skills. Some jobs require a degree, but as long as you have one (even in underwater basket weaving or something) your fine, it's just a checkbox for a qualification.
Who's to say that they can't do both? Really, this goes for any degree you get. The school is just the framework around which you build an education. You can go to a really good school, and learn very little, or go to a very poor school, and learn a lot. You get out of it what you put in. The education is just the framework around which you build experience. You can get a really good education, and not turn it into anything useful, or get a very poor education, and become very successful via raw experience. Again, you get out of it what you put in.
The good thing about this kind of degree is that it can lead to several careers. It can lead to a career in marketing, based on the design aspects, or a career in software engineering, based on the programming aspects. In fact, it could even lead to a career in game development, but I doubt that most of the students who graduate (let alone enroll) will actually get into game development.
With the possible exception of casual games; the game designer, programmer, and artist are likely to be different people. So I wouldn't be looking to hire someone with all of those skills, but instead, the best people I could find in each category.
Depends on how much of your time supporting yourself and doing the degree work takes up. For most people I know, these two things take up 120% of their time.
If you owned a video game studio, who would you publish? Some guy who sat on his ass and got a degree in "video game design" from some no-name school? Or some guy that programmed and released for free an innovative game over the internet? I'd take the guy that has results.
Uh, perhaps the time spent in the course gives you some skills to make your own video game which you can use to impress people. It's not like you're just paying for a note from your teacher after 4 years of doing nothing.
Have there not already been two articles on slashdot about how game developers are forced to work 14 hour days, six days a week? Also, isn't that stuff all being offshored, or given to guest workers?
There have been several. Game programmers get treated like crap because almost everyone with computer skills would rather be working on Epic Warfare 5 than Generic_Financial_Database. As a result, there's a real over-supply of talent, more so than other fields. Hollywood has the same problem with writers and actors/actresses. In the absence of SAG/WGA rules, the sheer weight of the fanfic writers and "was in a play in high school" actors willing to work for peanuts for a shot at becoming the next JJ Abrams, Tom Cruise, or Julia Roberts would dramatically force down writer and actor wages and working conditions.
The degree is not going to help you, showing an employer you know what you're doing through a tangible product will get you hired.
I wonder if the degree (or at least the courses that lead to the degree) could help you gain those skills?
Nah, people are either born knowing how to program or they're not. No one has ever matriculated from a university with more ability to program than they had when they first enrolled.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The real question you should have used as a rebuttal: does the GMU "video game designer" program give its students the opportunity to CREATE a RESULT that they can use to get hired? If so, golly. If not, it's a waste of time.
Education is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Just because you get a degree does not entitle you to the wonderful career of designing a video game for 60 hours a week while being paid peanuts.
Ideally you get your degree, THEN you spend a summer or a semester at a specialized vocational school learning the latest techniques. Universities are really not the best place for learning tech created in the last 3 years.
However I do agree there just are too many humanities courses in a typical degree. You may argue all about how knowing Chaucer rounds you out, but in reality, EVERYONE forgets that shit the instant the class is over. Knowing that Wordsworth wrote in a more common manner still has not proved useful in real life.
Really, simply getting a degree in video game design won't guarantee you a great job? Thank you captain obvious for that insightful commentary on an issue that is certainly unique to the video game industry.
"Our anticipated enrollment for the fall is 500 percent higher than we expected."
WTF? This from an associate dean?
I hope their language is better in their games or we'll have another "All our base..." incident.
What a lot of people publishing this story don't seem to realize is that this degree isn't just called 'Game Design', it's 'Applied Computer Science in Game Design'. Basically you're getting a -normal- Computer Science degree, but in place of a number of the electives you'd otherwise get to choose (ex: Robotics, Software Engineering, Data Mining), you're just taking the 'Game Design' courses instead.
So even if you fail at game design, you still have a Computer Science degree and the knowledge that comes with it.
[GMU also offers similar ACS programs in Geography, Biology, and Software Engineering]
That's a lightweight curriculum. It looks like a rehash of a theater arts course. And not a good one, like UCLA Film School. It's not technical at all. Nor does it include intensive art training. The people who come out of it won't be able to either program or do game artwork.
They don't even cover issues like playability, the psychology of reward systems, the social dynamics of multiplayer games, in-game economics, the management of game projects, or the economics of the industry.
There's no math at all. (Well, there's analytic geometry and calculus; high school level math.)
What are those graduates going to do?
GMU has always (since at least 1981, when I entered GMU) existed primarily to turn out defense contractor employees, not people who would benefit society. Even the Slashdot summary alludes to this. That's why I'm striving to give my children the true education I never received.
So that they are prepared to get sued by and counter-sue their publisher a half-dozen times.
In addition to Bethesda Softworks (Elder Scrolls), which is in Rockville, Maryland now and Epic Megagames which produces the Gears of War stuff now, and a ton of other cool gaming companies, Maryland and the DC area are host to Sid Meier, probably the greatest game producer of all time. It is still amazing to that in an era where games can be produced anywhere that the DC region (DC, Maryland, Virginia) is responsible for much good stuff.
Not funny, but insightful
There's an oversupply of people who want to work in the game industry, but certainly not an oversupply of talent. Building a big-budget game has all the complexities of a large-scale development (my last project had over a million lines of code and 300+ GB of assets), with all the limitations of small-scale low-level embedded systems development (got to fit that all into your console). People who can handle that are rare. I've been involved in hiring at my last few jobs, and we'd routinely turn away piles of applicants who thought programming was just about shuffling information back and forth between a data store and a front end, while crying that we were behind schedule because of unfilled positions.
There are long hours, but it's often self-inflicted. For a lot of us, we want to make something awesome, and working on a cool game and bringing a vision to life is what we enjoy doing for 10+ hours of our day. I've done it at my own startup and I've done it at EA. It's not for most people, but neither are most specialties.
There was a post on /. a while ago called "A Master's In CS or a Master's In Game Programming?"
John Carmack had an interesting comment on the subject here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207072&cid=16891904
a bunch of maps put together in your free time, no matter how awesome, are not likely going to do well against another applicant who has paid experience. "Look at this cool map I made for X game" is not nearly as eye catching on a resume as "Worked on X game, Y game, Z game...." even minor jobs look better when you have been paid for it.
go out, take the shit jobs, and earn your way in with a few titles under your belt... not hobby crafts.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
As a computer programmer at a Bioware, I can tell you that video game design degrees/diplomas are respected here. I do know several people who came in with a game design diploma. Most of the game designers I know came in with a Comp Sci degree though.
I also know people who came in as QA or got lucky and were hired with no experience when the company was starting.
I do not, however, know anyone who was hired after developing an indie game, without a degree or diploma.
I imagine that graduates of this program would have portfolio of work that they did in and outside of class, just like architecture and art students have. Those industries can evaluate people on that work, why can't the game industry?
No game designer should need to know C++. That's for programmers. You can design excellent games using existing engines without touching compiled code. Scripting in lua, python, SCUMM, whatever is all you really need.
So what is the plan here then? To churn the video game equivalent of javascript/web designers? Equating video web design with simple game scripting is like equating enterprise computing with dynamic web page programming. A 4-year degree just for that, for designing on top of existing engines? No discussions on how to design one, on understanding what it takes to make a game (both vertically and horizontally programming, architecture and integration)?
Unless a person is a natural when it comes to understanding programing (efficient programming that is), I highly doubt (based on what I've seen) the average programming student can get that type of understanding without getting closer to the metal. In particular, if this school is banking on being in the DC area and attract the heavy duty simulation market (in the military and medical fields), they need to provide a bit more than just teaching how to program on top of a engine with a scripting language.
Every geek goes through this rite of Passage...
http://abstrusegoose.com/206
(Bonus with Alt-Text and image can be clicked to display another similar one...)
Do we need another XKCD pic to go with thatÉ
The real question you should have used as a rebuttal: does the GMU "video game designer" program give its students the opportunity to CREATE a RESULT that they can use to get hired? If so, golly. If not, it's a waste of time.
If they teach enough programming skills and theory then it's fine. Actually to create anything you have to lift your ass off first, and no university will do that for you.
Who is going to coordinate the development efforts between the various departments? The best person in each category is likely to know jack about the other category, and you're not going to effectively turn talent into an actual finished game unless you can get some communication going between the different departments. Programmers don't want to have to deal with art issues, and artists really don't want to have to deal with scripting or programming.
This is where the tecnical artist (AKA technical director) steps in. He bridges the gap between programmers and artists, providing tools for artists and ensuring that art gets smoothly integrated into the game (among other things.) It's an unglamorous job, but technical directors actually tend to get paid more than other positions because it requires a solid understanding of both aesthetics (art) and function (programming.) So in fact, someone with "all of those skills" still plays an important role in game development - he lets the other departments focus on being the best at what they're doing :)
A programmer is a machine for turning pizza into code.
If you owned a video game studio, who would you publish? Some guy who sat on his ass and got a degree in "video game design" from some no-name school?
Ever hear of CalArts?
Graduates in animation alone include Brad Bird, Tim Burton, Ralph Eggleston, Jim Reardon, John Lasseter, Lou Romano, Bruce W. Smith, Andrew Stanton, Genndy Tartakovsky... List of California Institute of the Arts people
What would it be worth to have those names on your contact list?
Even though I was a seasoned programmer, the only thing any of the game studios I talked to about a job wanted was code. They wanted to see something I had written, maybe a demo, full working game, 3D graphics, sound, etc. Even though I had delivered several consumer products in the past for other companies, what they really wanted was someone that had already delivered games. A degree doesn't mean anything to these people.
I could maybe see a select few of these students might band together and kick out something interesting on their own. Having gotten an engineering degree from GMU though, and taken some of the CS classes there, I can assure you, it will be very few of the students that will be able to code anything....
I wish I could have just gotten 4 years of that newbie experience under my belt instead of spending it on a degree who's only real worth today is to get you that newbie job to begin with.
Sorry to hear that, but we get what we put in. The only way to get some expertise under the belt before graduation is by doing internships if possible, or work in computer labs as a second option. And by working in computer labs I don't mean showing students how to eject the CD drive but doing actual administration and setup (and luckily sysadmin programming/scripting.) The other option is to get an AA/AS degree, then get a job (even if only a data entry/report generating one) while doing the remaining junior and senior year at a 4-year college. With that path, it is almost certain to accumulate 1-2 years of programming experience...
Some anecdotal stories for shits and giggles... When I was in community college, I did everything I could to get a "computer" job. I was working at Home Depot at the time (selling floor/tile stuff and driving forklifts). I pestered management to gave me a job at the store data center (where they ran these old mini-computers and stuff.) Management tried, but there was never an opening. Later I got a part-time job at the comm.college computer lab, setting up software while tutoring and assisting teaching intro-to-micro courses, Pascal, Assembly, C and DBase. First connection was my Pascal professor with whom I got another part-time job doing Visual Basic programming... now I'm programming while getting paid!!!!
Next connection came from another professor with whom I was taking Delphi and Expert Systems programming. Through his class I get to meet a senior developer at one large insurance firm in my city (one of the largest in the country at the time). When I got my AA, he took me under his wing and got a job developing applications with FoxPro (we were doing the transition from procedural to object-oriented programming back then.) I did that while doing my junior and senior year in CS. On my last year, through another connection, I got a part-time job at the computer science department, doing Unix administration. I left my full-time FoxPro job to concentrate on the last 6 months of my senior year while working on that Unix admin job.
I graduated with my BS degree (and 3 years of programming experience already). Through another connection I made with school and work, I got a research job at a research center (distributed systems, formal methods and security were the focus of research). So as I'm plowing my way through the MS program and doing a lot of really good shit in C and C++, network protocol programming, distributed systems and the like, we started working with Java and CORBA...
and alas, through yet, another connection with the research center, I met a group of developers funding a start-up company that was heavy on Java and CORBA. Off I went to my full-time Java development job. 3 years of programming experience and 2 years of research with immediate industrial application sponsored by people doing that for a living. Just a year and a half after graduating with a BS degree and right in the middle of my masters.
After that job, I've had many others, many of them thank exactly for the type of research I did (performance evaluation of distributed authentication systems to be precise.) From SQL and relational database theory to software engineering to network programing to algorithm/complexity theory, each had helped me in a real way in the real world.
My advice to people studying CS - work on your connections and pursue internships/college lab jobs. Many of my friends from college got really sweet jobs right off the bat because they did internships. We get from college what we put in.
Sure I learned some things doing my CS degree, but most of it could have been learned just as well
As a person who went to art school, I could say you're right and wrong. Art school and this game design school if done right isn't just a sheet of paper but a product as well. I came out with a demo reel from my school as well as a degree. The question you proposed should really be "Who would you publish, some guy who spent 4 years getting a degree and has programmed and released an innovative game over the internet as part of the curriculum and has good grades and references that shows he gets along well with people? Or a guy who programmed and released a game just as innovative over the internet but really has no other credentials or anybody to vouch for him as a person since he was in his mom's basement the whole time?" Both of those people achieved results, and the guy in his mom's basement is 30 - 60k richer since he's not burdened with school debt, but working at a company is a team effort and the people skills you learn in school as well as the connections go a long way in securing a job just as much as the results you're talking about.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
OK. But such a person isn't likely to have majored in CS. Of course along with the better pay goes fewer job opportunities than artists and programmers.
> from some no-name school?
GMU isn't a no-name school. It's law school is decent, for one. (42 out of about 200 by USNWR, not that their ratings are that determinative, but they give you an idea.) It doesn't have the same brand power nationally as top schools, but it's significantly better than no-namers.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It really doesn't matter how many Freshmen enroll.
We need to see the second year statistics. And, soon, the graduation figures, and then placement figures.
I notice that above me in this browser window as I type this comment, there's a University of Phoenix ad. Hmmm...
Allot
Allot
give or apportion (something) to someone as a share or task
THIS DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES.
> I'd like to get in at Lucasarts so they can start making GOOD games again, like I STILL play Xwing vs Tie Fighter
A lot of the time the folks in the engine room are just doing the best they with the direction coming down from non-technical management. Ie; you will spend this much money, it will take this long, you will not attempt to compete with our flagship product by making yours way cooler (I'm not joking), you will not introduce features which have not been approved by some guy in marketing, the list just goes on.
Working from the engine room trying to get a company that is making crap to make better stuff has its good side and bad side. On the positive side you will get recognized and rewarded for your heroic efforts against the tide. You might even elevate something to greatness. On the negative side during the process you may experience a lot of stress and spend time doing pointless things that someone else really should have done in the first place. And not least, you might be promoted to a position you really cant handle, and maybe don't even want.
Shit jobs oftentimes practice skills and knowledge which not everyone will have. It might sound like crap work but I bet if you talk to the guy who animated trees he found some of those skills valuable when he moved up. I think you will find he was not doing that very long although it might have seemed like an eternity. But, do not get stuck in this kind of work for one outfit. If nothing is happening, go and do the same work somewhere else if you have to. Sounds the same but really its different.
While you are doing one of the shit jobs or working with good technical people who happen to build average for a living due to the above constraints, find out from them what the core skills are they can't do without and the biggest challenges in their kind of work and practice them in your own time. You will talk about the challenges you encounter while doing this and they will help you grow. Remember that everybody (even the people who are applying the constraints on the development parameters) are in the same system and try to understand the big picture why they are making those decisions technical and otherwise. As you develop skills you will begin to see the inflexion points where you can make a difference and especially where you can make a difference without pointless stressful effort which will consume your time and energy which would be better spent getting a really good perspective on the technical challenges and overcoming them.
Build yourself, not the game you are currently working on.
- old guy
I've known as many people over the years with CS degrees who couldn't code for shit. And some of them have an assload of experience, and/or graduate degrees from respectable universities. I've met guys who are young and seem really sharp, then find out later that its all bullshit. Then there are the old farts who don't seem to bright, maintaining legacy code, who when you get to know them, really know what the fuck they're doing.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Welcome back, Kilgore Trout. Thanks for that satire video. 4chan any recently or you just pinching a loaf hurr evar once in a while loop?
FckTnWo!
Shortly after your first C++ midterm, your numbers should stabilize a bit.
there will be no C++ midterm because THEY DONT TEACH C++! they switched to Java because "it's where the industry's going" (so much for education), so i guess the platform of choice is going to be cellphones.
because of the proximity to federal government centers
Seriously? This is an issue? Government man can't be bothered with people he'd have to call long-distance? I understand there's some overhead with moving costs, and some issues with family roots, but there is no way that the physical location of the school should have that big of impact.
Right when I was about to graduate college I thought I was going to get into game design. I graduated from NYU, developed contacts with the local gaming companies, attended the functions...etc.
And then I realized it was all way too much effort for too little payoff. I was meeting up with family men in their 30's and 40's who were working jobs with long hours and low pay. They sacrificed high paying, slightly more boring jobs and financial firms for a shot in the games world. The only people that actually got to call the shots and make the games THEY wanted were the dudes that owned the gaming companies. And those guys weren't even hard-core programmers, they were just some guys who put together enough capital to start a business and hire programmers.
I learned that being a game programmer/designer was pretty similar to being an actor or director in the movie business. You're looking at long hours, low pay, and potentially an entire lifetime without a shot at the big leagues. You need to spend lots of time in 'the trenches' doing crappy menial work that might just be a giant waste of time.
At my current job as a business oriented programmer, I'm getting good pay, benefits, reasonable hours and a lot of leeway into how to complete my own projects and solve problems. It's a good company and from what I've heard a lot more fulfilling than spending years as a 'code-monkey' in some of the larger software sweatshops. Pretty soon I'll be able to buy some real estate and the like. After I've made some investments that give me the ability to live well without working a top dollar job, I MIGHT consider starting my own little game company startup/devoting time to an indie game.
I think the path to being a game designer is really similar to the path of being the 'shot-caller' in any other field. Amass capital, and start your own. Otherwise you're looking and years and years and years of slave-like working conditions all to common to artistic jobs, only to have to participate in drama and politics once you reach the top. I'd rather dive straight into making a startup, rather then working years as a drone, only to become the boss, and essentially windup with the same responsibilities you might have as a business owner!
Why does it matter to you? Do you have ANY idea of the disparity of jobs related to the game industry? You don't have to be a goddamned C++/assembly geek to be able to create great artwork or level-event scripting for a game engine. There's so much that goes into video games, and it's such a big industry, that of COURSE not everybody will be a fucking 3D graphics engine programmer.
Please, you people really need to get over yourselves! You all come across as so arrogant on this website!
If someone decided they wanted to use Unity 3D or the Unreal Dev Kit (UDK), all they have to learn is either JavaScript or UnrealScript. That's it! Those engines are geared towards artists and level designers, not necessarily the I've-been-programming-since-age-two crowd. It seems like everybody on this website seems to think that everyone in the world who is involved in anything remotely technical is a dumbass if they don't have a technical degree and knows how to create their own compiler. How many of you people can design and build (or even troubleshoot) your own fucking cars?!
Let those kids do what they want to do without you telling everyone that "they lack creativity" or "they'll drop out when they hit C++ courses". If you're so creative and smart, then why aren't you running your own innovative company, instead of posting on Slashdot?
To elnkya: You don't NEED to be a graphics programmer to make useable simulations with a solid graphics engine. Being a decent graphics artist may help, and even then, I know of FIVE different types of work involved with content creation. Artists don't need to program engines from ground up, or even UNDERSTAND how they work.
Car analogy: Does a designer who styles motor vehicles need to understand everything about how a vehicle works? No. It would help, and they actually might, but I'm sure there are actual engineers down the chain who later put those design concepts into useable numbers and build a car that is both balanced and beautiful.
If a game/simulation engine already exists, then it doesn't need to be created, now, doesn't it? So, those Mason students don't need to know C++. The tech is out there, and I feel that the next generation of students will be able to put it to great use, and yes, in the military, industrial, scientific, and medical fields. The engine developers out there now already know this, and advertise such on their sites right next to the links to download their software kits.
To the AC from Mason: I'm sure you're very qualified to tell us who's creative and who's not. I mean, you're a STUDENT, so you must be in the know, right? Don't be so arrogant and judge others. Even if anybody there showcased their work to your arrogant ass, it doesn't mean that they can't improve as time progresses. But, I guess you're a student just for fun, because you know it all already, right?
Food for thought: I don't know C++. But, I do know modo, LightWave, PhotoShop, and Zbrush. I also can script with UnrealScript. I am 110% capable of creating a beautiful, running 3D game with the Unreal Engine. How do I know this? Because I fucking DID. And got kudos from people I didn't know about my work. You might not like it; your friends might not like it. But I did it. Now, when those students from Mason do the same thing, and end up starting their own game dev company, you can see their work, too, while you 'code away' at your little jobs in the bowels of some company, still griping on Slashdot.
If you owned a video game studio, who would you publish? Some guy who sat on his ass and got a degree in "video game design" from some no-name school? Or some guy that programmed and released for free an innovative game over the internet?
Well, when you put it that way, I think I'd hire the guy who published the internet game. But if we swap around your prejudices...
If you owned a video game studio, who would you publish? Some guy who got a degree in video game design from an accredited and widely respected school? Or some guy that sat on his ass and programmed and released for free some crappy game that no one ever heard of, much less played, over the internet ?
All of a sudden I want to hire the guy who went to school! It's like magic!
The GMU Game Design Degree is not a CS Degree. It is a BFA program in Computer Game Design. This is also coupled with a high level math and physics requirements. The program at GMU is no Trade school. It is steered by industry leaders and a committed faculty. Check out the curriculum before you go making assumptions that this is a cs degree in video games. game.gmu.edu