Game design schools are bad?

[brokenbot]

I'm hearing that actual game design schools are really bad to go to.

Why exactly is this?
I was going to enroll into a game design program at my technical college, but was advised not to.

[zb0S216C]

I don't see how they're a bad thing. Schools offer structured learning, resources, learning assistance( your teacher, for example ), and the chances of having a teacher that has experience in game design, and/or game programming is quite high.

but was advised not to

Don't listen to them.

[Computergeek01]

This is true for any specialization, wiether it's Game Design or Forensic Science. Even though these schools may be accredited in your state to provide a degree, and that degree can legally be called "Computer Game Design" or what ever they often skip over entire subjects because they decide they were unneccesary. What they are doing is taking the model for a trade school, like beauty school, and trying to apply it to actual degrees. The problem here is that even though it may not help you to have a degree in dermitology to apply makeup, or a minor in thermodynamics to fix a car engine, it most certainly IS helpful to understand the Operating System and the physical Hardware it is running on in order to write software for a system.

You would end up spending two years and tens of thousands of dollars (assuming you're American) to get a degree that a potential employer may have already decided is worthless to him, and would hamstring you from the start.

[packetpirate]

I would argue that a degree from a community college is more valuable than that of a degree from one of these new "game design schools". They're trying to cater to the massive amounts of teenagers who want to get into game design. The problem is that these students often think game design is simple and anyone can do it. Look into the percent of people that change majors or drop out from programming degrees.

[Computergeek01]

It would be wrong of me not to follow up on the post I just wrote here. The model for this kind of thing can be beneficial to you, but you have to realise that a degree in Computer Science would allow you to persue a career in game design. But a degree in Game Design would not allow you to persue a career in Computer Science, which is a larger field.

Here is the scenario: Two guys sitting in a room discussing the budget for the future curriculum, one is the head of the CS department the other is the Cheif Financial Officer for the school.

Guy1: "Ok, so our projections are off and we need more money. The school has already told us that they aren't going to increase our budget since that would increase the per credit cost for all of the students. What can we do to without destroying the value of our CS degrees or cutting staff etc.?"

Guy2: "Well it looks like over 60% of our Computer Science students here want to program video games. It occurs to me that we may be wasting money on teaching everyone how to repair printers, manage a domain or build a network if they aren't interested in it especially since that is a large chunck of that departments budget for parts and licenses."

Guy1: "Yeah but that would screw over the other 40%. Employers would see the new graduates and associate that lack of knowledge with our school eventually leading to a decrease in new students because the old ones couldn't find jobs."

Guy2: "I know! Instead of cutting that stuff out of the CS course let's offer a seperate degree in Video Game Design, we could take the high cost classes like Printer Repair, Networking and all of that extra stuff and form it into new classes which becomes mandatory for any students who wish to get a Computer Science degree but which were actually part of the curriculum all along so anyone in our current staff could teach. Then in addition to the relavent CS programs that we already have and many of those students are already taking, so minimal increase in cost to both sides, we add Video Game design courses that the Video Game Design majors could take."

Guy1: "Then we could also advertise that we have a brand new and unique degree specifically in Video Game design and potentially draw in new students that would have otherwise not have applied. I'll bet that the new influx of students for a degree like that would more then pay for any increased cost to that department."

There's a bit more to this hypothetical conversation but I felt like it drifted too far from my point.

[kfmfe04]

if you have the intelligence and drive to learn how to write a game engine from scratch, you probably don't need to learn it from school - if I owned a gaming company, I'd rather hire one Jeri Ellsworth (a version of her who's into software) than a team of mediocre developers who have a degree from some technical school:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/technology/20joystick.html

however, you should do whatever you need to do to learn what you want to do... ...that's what she did.

check out this shooting gallery she built recently

http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth

edit: if you watch the entire video, you can see that she understands the fundamentals of electronics and has the creativity to use a spinning CD to take advantage of persistence of vision: very clever! compare that with many beginners on this board who want to write a multithreaded C++ fps in a week and don't know the difference between an automatic and a dynamic variable...

[Moschops]

compare that with many beginners on this board who want to write a multithreaded C++ fps in a week and don't know the difference between an automatic and a dynamic variable...

Ah Spoons, where did you go? :)

[ModShop]

Moschops wrote:

Ah Spoons, where did you go? :)

Hahaha, lol. (Spoon licker in a nutshell)->"I know 'Hello World', now teach me 3d game engine design!"

[Computergeek01]

Don't forget about the pointers rant guys. I think I missed his\her last visit :,(. That little troll really left a mark on this site huh?