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Education Entertainment Games

Another Game Development School Pops Up 16

Posted by CowboyNeal from the wide-open-playing-fields dept.
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.
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Another Game Development School Pops Up More

Another Game Development School Pops Up

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  • Tonight, while seeing a yet-unpublished story from The Mysterious Future, the last line said: "See any problems with this story?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)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @02:55PM (#5912984) Homepage Journal
    But I think that anyone skilled in the software field can write game software, regardless of if they've taken the special classes, so game companies are likely looking for extensive software industry experience, from any market, and overall reputation when they hire programmers.

    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.
    • Well, this is a community college vocational program here. I don't think it's aimed at the same people as those who might be considering going to Harvard.

      For those who can't get in to a top notch 4 year CS program, this program could be a useful alternative.
      • That's really too bad. I would think that such a program would be at the graduate level considering how much math you should know to be good at writing graphics engines; not to mention the need for a good background in algorithms.

        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.
        • I know what you mean. I would have to imagine that this program concentrates on using popular graphics engines, or something like that (the article doesn't say). I can't imagine a two year community college program could successfully impart enough knowledge in that time to have students writing their own ray tracers and other goodies...

    • Second point particularly important (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @04:54PM (#5914186) Journal
      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.

      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)

    by xingix ( 601512 ) <xingix@hotma i l .com> on Thursday May 08, 2003 @03:06PM (#5913104)
    If anyone is interested in taking the video game dev. courses at CDIS in Vancouver, Canada--- I suggest you DON'T. They cut the program off after my first year into their 3-year program because the content was too hard and people were dropping out. I stuck it out because they promised me that the program would be there for the remainder of my three years. After my former University's entrance deadline passed, CDIS tanked the program. They didn't offer any sort of reimbursement. The courses aren't transferrable. The staff were unfriendly and had the "oh well come back again next year we may start it up again" attitude when I came back to discuss my options with them after the program's termination. As far as I know the school is teaching Game Design again but I would avoid the program altogether. My advice: Go to a real University and get your Computer Science degree like I did if you want to be a video games programmer. Now I work at EA :-D
  • Has anyone checked to see if games developers recognise such degrees?

    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)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 )
    Don't you just hate these annoying pop-ups?

  • 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?

    neurostar
  • The faculty and trustees of the school hope to get students ready to enter the field of video game making. A field where Elaine Reeder, an associate professor of computer graphics, estimates salaries can start as high as $60,000 per year at the right employer.

    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)

    by TexVex ( 669445 )
    I find it interesting that most posts on this thread are talking about video game programming, not video game design. Once upon a time, back when 8-bit processors and 16-color displays were king, one or two people could design and program a game, and probably do the artwork and sound as well. These days, game studios tend to have a small number of designers and plenty of programmers, artists, and Quality Assurance personnel. The article doesn't actually mention programming -- it mentions that the curricu

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