Is post-secondary education necessary to get a job in the industry?
I am currently a 2nd year Game Development student at Durham College, and am interested in becoming either an environment artist, level designer, or 3D generalist. With the amount of time this program demands due to several mandatory courses that I am not interested in (animation, flash, programming), coupled with the exceptionally high tuition fees ($7500 annually), I can't help but wonder if there may be a more realistic way to pursue and secure my career goals.
Given the class hours combined with the time it takes to effectively complete assignments, I know for a fact that I am putting in far more hours a week working than what would be required of a working professional. I could also go without being $10'000 in debt to student loans. I could also go without virtually sacrificing my social life and sleep much of the time.
With the foundation of skills I have already developed, coupled with the information I now know to further my knowledge and pursue my desired career goals, would an Advanced Diploma really give me a competitive edge, over an independently developed and competent portfolio and demo in lets say, 2 years?.
I have approximately 1.75 years left of my 3 year advanced diploma.
Given the class hours combined with the time it takes to effectively complete assignments, I know for a fact that I am putting in far more hours a week working than what would be required of a working professional. I could also go without being $10'000 in debt to student loans. I could also go without virtually sacrificing my social life and sleep much of the time.
With the foundation of skills I have already developed, coupled with the information I now know to further my knowledge and pursue my desired career goals, would an Advanced Diploma really give me a competitive edge, over an independently developed and competent portfolio and demo in lets say, 2 years?.
I have approximately 1.75 years left of my 3 year advanced diploma.
Replies
Post your work, it's the only way to tell where you are at. Some people are naturally gifted, some need more work. Some people can only learn in a classroom setting, some are self learners. Only you know that question.
In certain cases a diploma certainly helps. Some cases, a diploma is not necessary. What I can tell you is that having a degree will rarely hurt your prospects. It tends to help you more than it hurts you.
If I were hiring you, I'd ask you why you quit school and if you'd quit on us if you were tasked with something that maybe you didn't want to do.
It is if you work for a company that actually knows how to plan and schedule things. The fact that people work 50-60 hour weeks is a symptom of management being fucking retarded.
Anyway.
Yes, you can get a job in this industry without getting a degree. I am living proof of that.
That said, school can be extremely helpful for learning time management and workflows. If you feel you could get the same or better work done by working on your own, it may be worth looking into self teaching. If you feel that you may want to work overseas at some point, though, a degree will make the entire process MUCH less painful.
By degree you mean at least a Bachelor's Degree?
-Can I actually do this own my (think back on the last time you had a week off from school and how much you did).
-If you keep going, how much can you get away with on schoolwork to just "pass", on courses that you don't feel like doing just put in the bare minimum (ye I know it sucks, atm 3/5 of my courses are ones that I'd rather not do).
-If you don't go to school, what is your alternative, do you have money to sustain yourself for 1 year+? (and how much is this compared to what you pay for school).
Or in the worst case, does this mean going to work at McDonalds untill you are "ready"?"
And how does that last compare to keep going to school for motivation for you personally.
-Any plans on doing something to replace going out for school? (I personally wouldn't be able to just sit at home every day);
-So how much time/day are you actually gaining not going to school for self-improvement, and realistically, how much of those do you think you will actually put into learning.
-Where are you living and what are the opportunity's inside your own country to get work?
-> Important to get a degree or not, degree can be a + because of all the legal stuff when working outside of your country.
So decide what the alternative for you would be, and weigh off the pro's and cons, because honestly no one here can now what is best for you.
In the end think about it well.
It all sounds good when you think about it, but things might turn out bad if you wouldn't plan some things well.
So altough school may suck on some things, sometimes in life you just gotta suck it up and just keep at it untill it's done.
Post your work - you have no work/portfolio posted at the moment, so you are talking yourself up but I don't see any work that indicates you wouldn't benefit from additional schooling.
A degree is worth the paper it is printed on as an artist. You'll be judged entirely on your portfolio, so that ought to be your job.
I don't know what else you're doing aside from classes but if you think you're working harder on your classes than you would on a game I would really like to know what hours you're putting into school. Back when I was working on my (non-game/art related degree) I was putting about 35 hours a week into that and 30 hours a week into my portfolio/self-education, plus working 24 hours a week at a part time job.
this is your program, yes?
http://www.durhamcollege.ca/programs/game-development
While I agree that 5 semesters of animation is a bit much for an environment artist, knowing the fundamentals of animation is useful, especially as environments get more and more dynamic. two semesters of "game coding" hardly seems like a rigorous programming curriculum, but it will introduce you to concepts and make it easier for you to both work on your own games and script levels/write tools, all of which are exceptionally valuable skills to have. I'm assuming the casual games I/II/III are flash courses? again, those are useful for both game development, UI, etc. Cross-training in school curriculum is also not a bad thing!
If you're expecting a school program to give you a portfolio and only offer classes catered to your narrow game art discipline, you're both going to be perpetually disappointed and miss a lot of opportunities to learn and network - just because you're not going to be an animator doesn't mean you shouldn't meet and work with animators.
long story short, school is not essential and can be skipped by fantastic people, but you've done nothing to demonstrate how fantastic you are, and you live in Canada, which has a significantly smaller game development industry than the US, and has money drying up in Montreal as they've been reworking the tax incentives that they used to build up Montreal as a development hub.
With the information at hand, I can't advise you to skip school.
Honestly, if you're really gung-ho about being a cool self-starting guy who doesn't need to play by the rules, go make some friends who are also super passionate about games in your major and in Computer Science/IT and make some fucking games with them. School is a unique experience in that you are surrounded by people and tools to just be groovy and develop cool shit. Leverage that. That's what I did while getting an unrelated degree - I made a lot of programmer friends and was "art bitch" on a half dozen games in school. None of them were amazing (except one) but I learned a metric fuck-ton about game development from developing games with these guys. And then we all graduated and got jobs in the industry based on our extra-curricular work and 5 years later I'm getting to skip the line at E3 to check out Halo 4 because my college buddy is the producer showing it off and I have a career network made up of former co-workers and college friends that I can use to help find new opportunities, learn, etc.
Also while I understand $7500/year is expensive, newb environment artists make ~30-50k/yr and that number goes up to about $80/yr at the senior level. The extra $10k you still need to spend to finish out college is not going to be crippling, insurmountable debt.
Of course all of this is assuming you're good and motivated and hard working (which is all shit that shows in your portfolio, don't bother telling me that you're hard working or motivated or love to make games - all the words in the world can't overrule a shitty portfolio). If you're a slacker who wanted to be a game dev rockstar (good luck, wrong industry for rockstars) but not put in the 10,000 hours to learn the trade, you should cut your losses asap.
Let me start out by saying, yes, there are a lot of courses that you wont enjoy. I know I certainly didn't like all of them. But the key is to focus your attention on the ones you like, and just get by on the others. Programming / flash, I dunno who the teacher is now, but when I went through, they knew none of us wanted to do it, so they were very good about not marking too hard. Don't worry about getting A's in every class. Focus on the classes you want to do in the end. It will help, immensely.
Second... People will argue a degree is only worth it if you're applying overseas. Hell, I am one of them. But here's the kicker. You are in a 3 year advanced diploma program. That is not a recgonized certificate for that. They want a full fledged degree. Not diploma. Your 3 years only really counts as 1. You need another few years of studio experience before over seas is really an option (unless you get a working vacation visa ahead of time and THEN apply).
Third. How's your motivation? How's your work ethic? If you were to drop out, would you be able to still make yourself work on your stuff all the time? And I do mean all the time. If you want a job, you really do have to spend a lot of time on it. Some learn / improve faster than others. That is most definitely true. But one of your cons in your OP was that you have no social life because you're always doing homework. If you're serious about getting a job, that's what you have to do. I use to not believe it, and would only spend about 10 hours a week on stuff. But now, I see it more and more. The guys in the good studios are the ones that really put their time into it.
Also, a lot of companies are starting to prefer you with education. Not necessarily because it means your work will be better, but because it means you have experience with deadlines and working in groups.
So really, it's up to you. If you quit, you better be damn ready to bust your ass off. Take weekends off, bust your ass during the week. But bust your ass. If not, you're gonna be screwed regardless.
We unfortunately still live in a world where this is a standard of measure in terms of being considered trained and competent as a modern professional. Many years ago for most jobs we'd all be on the same level without a degree and those who had them were damn valuable. Now a degree is the expectation, something that a lot of businesses believe any person should be able to achieve and therefore a symbol of capability for the work they offer. Yes it's not required if you can strut your stuff, especially as an artist but that's now an exception to the rule.
Um. I am currently working 40 hour weeks, and never any overtime. I think I have worked overtime 3 days in the past two and a half years.
I don't have a college degree, and I've been working in the industry for a while now.
Way to be a jerk.
That being said, how many of us have put in well over 40 hours a week working on side projects, competitions, or our initial portfolios? Does that mean we are all "fucking retards" or are we just passionate? I know right out of school, I worked 40 hours a week on my side job and probably spent 40 more hours working on getting pieces ready or continually learning new things. The OP has to ask themselves that when they work their side job, will they be motivated to work more on their portfolio? If the OP is considering quitting school, then I doubt the work ethic is there.
The degree also helps you land a mid-level position right off the bat, rather than just a entry level pixel drone who doesn't do anything but repetitive tasks all day long and it'll take to 2 times as long to move up the ladder than your degree counterparts. Granted, there are probably many people who without degrees landed higher level positions and moved up quickly, but their portfolios where impeccable. Those people were bound to succeed anyways. Are you one of them?
You should test yourself out by entering one of the competitions. See where you stack up against this industry. See how well you really work under deadlines.
The networking you gain at school is beyond priceless as Ghostscape pointed out. You have a considerable advantage in landing that first job if you can get introduced to alumni at various studios. Even if it's just a referral from a teacher to someone they have taught a while back but still keep in contact with. That right there is worth the price of the degree.
yes, try to get piece of paper called bachelor certificate . unfortunately for customs they value more that thing than portfolio. ..
I don't have one, I barely made it here ...
ughhh
why don't we have a sticky for this topic yet? Nerfbat is well on the way for a great links sticky page on the subject.
I've been getting the constant feeling that eventually GD will be nothing but stickies (not that that will be bad though)
Where else can I go if I have a degree in Computer Games Design?
I've been developing games since before being a teenager, and no longer want to persue it as a career. I have quite a broad knowledge of programming, know a lot of 3D tools but not much about art. Worked with audio, music, recently video editing.
The catalyst for this was my first "big team" project, approx. 7 months in a group of 15 developing a game as lead design. It all went straight to hell. We were only allowed UDK, yet supplied programmers who had never used it before and no interest in learning it. Some members did some good work, but despite multiple efforts to make it as straightforward as possible (an asset list, with concept art defining the style, dimensions, resources available) the vast majority did absolutely nothing. I screwed up as lead design and then had to balance doing roughly 1/3-1/2 of the environment modelling and pretty much all the programming, working 16-18 hours for about 10 straight weeks ending with three days with a couple of hours of sleep at the end putting it all together. While doing three other modules. My sloppy lead design work left the members who were willing to put any work in confused and the scope was all over the place. We were pretty much the only group in the year to get a mostly working game out the door, but it was hell.
On the face of that, I never want to work on a game as a team ever again. Which means I'm never working on a game ever again. Which means I need to look elsewhere for work, and try desperately to match my heavily games-centric skillset to another career. I'm going to finish my degree because I'm on track for a first (which should help get my foot in the door somewhere?) but after that, that's that for me and games development.
On topic, by the sounds of it you just need to try and get some kind of contact inside the companies you want to work for. Posting CVs straight to the HR department, judging by what I've been told, sounds like a complete waste of time.
Next!
But no, its not needed, but it is a plus.
More and more places looking for people with degrees though so I think it helps a lot do have one now. I didn't really want to do one but, with only a few months left on mine I am so glad I did. Without it some doors are just closed or much harder to open (moving to the US for example).
JamesWild: I feel your pain. I think the major problem with that assignment is how they put the team together. Let people make there own and get all the good people together I say. Its not fair that the slackers take up team space and make more work for others.
And as you said it does not help that the people assigned to be programmers all come from a course that covers no Unreal at all.
No its not necessary, but is almost critical if you want to work overseas.
I'm kind of in the same boat, but I'm lucky enough to have found a way.
Having taken a Game Development course and luckily enough taking generic computer courses, I got a student position for the local government in IT Setup services (I know... original), once in I applied for any relatable jobs a moved up the ladder. Now I'm working for fleet services as extension of IT.
Without my diploma I would have never been where I am.
All this to say is I had a fall back plan just in case and it's all because of my diploma. So it may seem like a waste of time and if you're dedicated enough you can do it without but I felt safer with a piece of paper.
this is why many people recommend getting a degree in a related field like fine arts, graphic design, industrial design, computer science, or even something like modern literature.
Because if you find you can't get a games job one of these degrees will be much more useful than a specialist games degree.