Best Education Path To Learn Video Game Programming?

Proudrooster writes "Fellow Slashdotters, I have transitioned to teaching and my students have asked me what is the best path to take to work in the video game programming industry. Which would be of more benefit: pursing a Computer Science degree or taking an accelerated program like those at FullSail? I have a CS degree, and suspect that the CS degree would be of more benefit in the long run, but I would like anyone in the industry to share their wisdom and experience with my students trying to follow in your footsteps. If you could recommend some programs in your replies it would be appreciated." A couple other questions that might help those students: what non-academic methods would you recommend to students looking for a career in the games industry? What projects and tools are good starting points for learning the ropes?

Comments

The first thing you need...

[sgbett]

...is a degree in living on bread and water from what I hear!

Lie to them

[IICV]

Seriously, lie to the little suckers. If they're asking about what the best way to become a video game programmer is, they probably haven't actually done anything besides play video games. Lie to them and tell them that a full CS degree is the only way to go, because if nothing else it gets their ass in college at which point hopefully the cluebat will strike and they'll figure out what they really want to do.

The ones who are actually going to become good game devs are already making maps, mods, skins or even full-on games with their pirated version of Creative Suite 5.7.whatever, so you don't need to worry about them.

Re:Lie to them

[Pharmboy]

I've had TWO teen boys at different times ask me the very question "What do I need to do to get into game programming?" and my answer was simple:

You don't. If that is what you *really* wanted to do, you would already be skinning and modding, but instead you are playing games 24/7.

The problem is that they think it would "be fun", kinda of like playing games, but with more control. I did point the older (17) boy to the Steam SDK, which was free since he had a source game, and told him to dig in using the free tools. That lasted less than the time to download the tools. Two years prior, he had decided he wanted to get a job as a "video game tester".... Yea, I know.

1st of all: Join the modding community.

[Qbertino]

First of all: Join the modding community. Find a mod that is in active develpoment and that you like and join the team. See what you like most on the project and if you tend more to the programming or the designing side.

Depending on that you have various options: Joining a special course in Game Developement, Animation, etc. like Full Sail or the likes if you're a Designer type. Or regular CS with a focus on Application Development if you are the programmer type.

Anyway you do it, joining the modding community is a must before anything else.

Why?

[Aceticon]

I was under the impression that the consensus here is that video games programming was, at least in the mainstream industry, an extreme sweatshop, slave-like, gaming-enjoyment destroying kind of IT job...

Sure, do it for fun (who doesn't) but joining the industry is a bad idea.

Maybe u should first do your due diligence and warn them about it!?

Re:Oh boy

[zwei2stein]

In fact, if you really like developing games, you ought to take 8/5 corporate soul-crushing job (that will crush your soul much, much less) and just make games in your spare time (or at work during downtime) for fun.

Being full-time game devs is not any more glorious than producing yet another client address screen. It is easy to get excited by stuff like playing throught HL2 episodes with commentary on or by reading blog of some lead dev/indie dev/wanabee-dev-smartass, but kids should realize that they are not going to be the ones making interesting decidions and artfully crafting game but peons building someone elses vision under incredible time constraint. Each company only needs few people who say "At this point, we will add x to enforce dramatic tension.". Becoming one of them is unlikely.

Step 1: Forget about friends and family

[Tridus]

The game industry is the western world's remaining sweat shop. One of my best friends works in the industry. During the last few months of development he tends to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. This goes on for months, and applies to the entire company. Why?

Because schedules in the game industry don't even pretend to be realistic. Marketing decides when the game will be out, and everybody works insane hours to make it so. It's not an exceptional thing, it's routine in the industry and based on game release dates I pretty much know when I'll stop hearing from him for a while. People get forced to do it because most of them are easily replaced due to a lot of other people who think "wouldn't it be cool to make games?"

It's not. He can't even enjoy the games he makes because working on them is so soul-crushing that it's impossible to have fun playing them. Hell, he doesn't even get paid overtime!

So if you really want to be in the game industry, make sure you're a loaner without a family who doesn't like to sleep very much.

A better bet is to get a CS degree, get a job working for some boring company or the government, and mod games as a hobby. Modders get to do it because they love it, on their own schedule.