Video game colleges are a sham, and anybody who's serious about entering the industry would be wise to avoid them. If you want to program games, get a traditional CS degree, focus heavily on graphics and AI, and do a lot of your own dev work in your spar time.
If you want to be an artist, do yourself a favor and go to an actual, reputable art school. You will gain the foundation you need to be a proper artist, not just some monkey hacking out metal-suited space marines all day.
I've known many people in the industry, and the verdict is unanimous: game degrees aren't worth crap, and generally the people coming out of them aren't as capable.
Well, the article is talking about a USC grad program, not really comparable to one of those video game only niche 'colleges.' The way I see it, it's not unlike other interdisciplinary sort of grad programs (e.g. robotics). In the end though, you're right in saying that a traditional degree in CS, with the raw skills in specialties needed in games like graphics and AI, is all you really need. FYI I am a game graphics programmer, with no game degree, just a CS undergrad degree from a public university who took a lot of masters level graphics classes in school and read a lot of SIGGRAPH papers.
"I’ve found that the best game designers have a well rounded education that includes the necessary Math, Science, & Computer Science courses, but also focuses on history, literature, science and other core subjects that take their imaginations to many different places. The games I’ve made have been based on topics that have interested me since I was a kid – history, airplanes, pirates, railroads etc. – topics I studied in school, read about in books, saw in movies, and learned about through boardgames and card games. It is definitely important to have strong technical skills to be a designer, but you also have to have cool ideas for games – and those ideas will come from places outside of computer science. One of our young designers graduated from Stanford with a degree in History and Computer Science which was key to his success in designing Civ IV. Other designers have studied a variety of things and honed their programming/designing skills by creating prototypes of games as a hobby, or being a part of beta testing groups. The most important thing is that your son has a passion for playing games – and plays them often (after he finishes his homework of course!)."
(from http://www.firaxis.com/community/asksid.php)
Anyone who likes computer games would be well served by playing Pirates! (and reading the manual that came with it, which is in itself a bit of a history lesson).
Yes, pure game colleges might be utter crap, but I think the "game-lines" you can choose at regular CS-universities is a good idea.
The one we have in Denmark[1] make the students work in a (small) real-life scenario, and actually produce games. On the side it is required to take courses in AI, graphics, HCI, distributed networks and other fields relevant for game development.
There are a lot of ads on TV for "getting into video games" - but unless you're at a top-tier school (like USC) and have a top-tier thesis from your MFA program, good luck with that.
The game developers still want people who have made good mods or have done good art on freeware or something along those lines. That shows an ability to do the work - the same as how you can get hired based on your work on OSS.
Sure, if you come out of Stanford or UIUC or whatever, you'll be able to interview with Google, but if you didn't, you better have done some good OSS work, or no dice.
Eventually, I'll write a blog post on the parallels on the corporate blog.
Maybe it's different in the US, but in my experience in the UK game industry we had a shortage of decent programmers. We couldn't care what university you came from, as long as you could code, you got in. Of course, most graduates can't code, regardless of whether they did compsci or a game-oriented course. (I taught myself before university and I have physics degree and had no trouble getting a game programming job)
We also have a program like the one described in Denmark with joint productions between programmers, musicians, architects, moviemakers, animators, graphic artists, etc.
The first graduates just finished their second joint production (and thereby their thesis) this summer. It'll be interesting to see whether or not the graduates will make it in the industry.
'"Awareness is growing, and more students are interested," said Thukral, who in 2004 became one of the inaugural students in USC's graduate program for video game development. "Computer science can be fun."'
That seems to imply that the fun of CS comes from it being about a fun topic. That's a very disturbing sentiment to me, one all too common.
[+] [-] potatolicious|17 years ago|reply
If you want to be an artist, do yourself a favor and go to an actual, reputable art school. You will gain the foundation you need to be a proper artist, not just some monkey hacking out metal-suited space marines all day.
I've known many people in the industry, and the verdict is unanimous: game degrees aren't worth crap, and generally the people coming out of them aren't as capable.
[+] [-] mthg|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comatose_kid|17 years ago|reply
"I’ve found that the best game designers have a well rounded education that includes the necessary Math, Science, & Computer Science courses, but also focuses on history, literature, science and other core subjects that take their imaginations to many different places. The games I’ve made have been based on topics that have interested me since I was a kid – history, airplanes, pirates, railroads etc. – topics I studied in school, read about in books, saw in movies, and learned about through boardgames and card games. It is definitely important to have strong technical skills to be a designer, but you also have to have cool ideas for games – and those ideas will come from places outside of computer science. One of our young designers graduated from Stanford with a degree in History and Computer Science which was key to his success in designing Civ IV. Other designers have studied a variety of things and honed their programming/designing skills by creating prototypes of games as a hobby, or being a part of beta testing groups. The most important thing is that your son has a passion for playing games – and plays them often (after he finishes his homework of course!)." (from http://www.firaxis.com/community/asksid.php)
Anyone who likes computer games would be well served by playing Pirates! (and reading the manual that came with it, which is in itself a bit of a history lesson).
[+] [-] rlm|17 years ago|reply
The one we have in Denmark[1] make the students work in a (small) real-life scenario, and actually produce games. On the side it is required to take courses in AI, graphics, HCI, distributed networks and other fields relevant for game development.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=342642
[+] [-] sachinag|17 years ago|reply
The game developers still want people who have made good mods or have done good art on freeware or something along those lines. That shows an ability to do the work - the same as how you can get hired based on your work on OSS.
Sure, if you come out of Stanford or UIUC or whatever, you'll be able to interview with Google, but if you didn't, you better have done some good OSS work, or no dice.
Eventually, I'll write a blog post on the parallels on the corporate blog.
[+] [-] pmjordan|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlm|17 years ago|reply
The first graduates just finished their second joint production (and thereby their thesis) this summer. It'll be interesting to see whether or not the graduates will make it in the industry.
[+] [-] Darmani|17 years ago|reply
That seems to imply that the fun of CS comes from it being about a fun topic. That's a very disturbing sentiment to me, one all too common.