Another Game Development School Pops Up 16
jboogs writes "Gamesarefun.com has a news story about a college in Camden, New Jersey that is offering majors in video game design. All these past years of Gaming was just preparing you for your future!" The school says they've been bombarded with calls from hopeful students after only two days since the program was announced. There's only a handful of schools that offer similar programs, but it might not be long until demand makes such schools more commonplace.
The end of duplicate postings is near? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Tonight, while seeing a yet-unpublished story from The Mysterious Future, the last line said: "See any problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor."
Looks like they are addressing the duplicate posts issue....
by letting us check, instead of doing it themselves
Oh well. That's still a lot better than nothing.
Subscribers will be able to spot and report dupes before they go public.
Maybe I'm just jeolous (Score:3, Insightful)
This is more likely to benefit the College than the students. (Who may be better off accepting they may not get to work in their favorite field for a while after graduation.)
I guess my central point is, don't turn down Harvard just because someone else tells you they'll let you play games for 4 years, and don't expect to be programming Civ V when you're 24.
Re:Maybe I'm just jeolous (Score:2, Informative)
For those who can't get in to a top notch 4 year CS program, this program could be a useful alternative.
Re:Maybe I'm just jeolous (Score:2)
It's all moot anyway. Even without these programs, the number of top notch game/graphics programmers out there already outnumbers the well paying jobs available for such people.
Re:Maybe I'm just jeolous (Score:1)
Second point particularly important (Score:4, Insightful)
This point stands on its own.
A lot of people get into game programming because they like playing video games. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and many people enjoy entertainment software development, but it's kind of important to recognize what you're getting into. Game development is software development under a lot of pressure, for companies that often don't have a great life expectancy (publishers last -- developers come and go). You often make less money than your general software developer. Game engines tend to have short lifespans, so a lot of your code is going in the rubbish heap after you're done with it -- which, at least for me, tends to discourage me from perfecting what I'm working on, which in turn doesn't give me the same feeling of pride that more traditional software development does. If you don't like matrix math, you're not going to like most current game graphics coding.
There are a few other issues with game development in general. I remember a fan of Final Fantasy saying "Boy, I wish I could work at Square". That's exactly what you *don't* want to do. When you've played a game ten million times to tweak features, and you see all the artifacts that you couldn't quite get exactly the way you want, and you know what gaps there are in the AI, the illusion breaks, and the game isn't fun to *play*. There are no secrets to discover. The characters are sprites, not people. All that would win you is the loss of your favorite series. Do something else, and keep playing and enjoying that series.
Video game development is an *extremely* new field. If you're going to a college that promises a game-oriented curriculum, be aware that the courses are going to be rough around the edges. If you're entering a new program at a college, you're going to catch all the assignments that are too hard or too easy, bugs or mistakes in the material, etc.
I have a few misgivings about teaching game programming, just because the paradigms move so quickly. Most things in game programming are easy to pick up if you have a CS background, but you don't want to waste money learning techniques that will be going out of style just after you graduate. If you learn polygon-based graphic techniques, or hardware reverb 3d sound tricks, it might not be worth much in a few years.
Finally, a lot of people have game design confused with game software development. Programming and designing a game are very different tasks. A person may well wear two hats (especially at smaller houses), but just because you're doing software dev for a developer does not mean that you'll get the opportunity to incorporate all those ideas that you've been thinking about.
There are people who are very happy doing game development. I just think that it's important that people realize what they're getting into.
CDIS in Vancouver (Score:4, Informative)
Err... (Score:1)
Newspapers prefer their writers to have english or history rather than journalism degrees, would developers prefer someone who has taken computer sciences, or something similar, rather than games design?
Oh man... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Oh man... (Score:2)
Is there demand? (Score:1)
There's only a handful of schools that offer similar programs, but it might not be long until demand makes such schools more commonplace.
Are there really that many jobs in the video game industry to warrant a drastic increase in the number of schools offering degrees?
neurostarSalaries (Score:1)
Please tell me who this employer is, and where they are based! I've nearly reached that figure, but only after nine years in the games industry. It seems to me that this is a highly unrealistic claim purely designed to fill classrooms.
Game Design, Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)