Canadian College Decision

Greeny_Green

Hello everyone. I need an advice. This year I am about to be a student at one of Toronto's colleges. I've seen a few related topics but these are about 2 or more years old. 
I've already applied to Centennial and George Brown colleges for Game Art program. At this moment I've got accepted only by Centennial and GBC is in progress, I'm sure the answer is going to be positive too.
Here I came to dilema: what choice is better?

Centennial: http://www.centennialcollege.ca/programs-courses/full-time/game-art-and-design/
George Brown: https://www.georgebrown.ca/g119-2018-2019/

JordanN

I did the George Brown Game Program but dropped out after 1 year. It's not that the actual program itself is bad, but I just really disliked how they throw so many courses at you that may not even be related to games. It reminds me of High School and how you had to to do certain courses that you may not care about later but that was when you're a teenager and still unsure about a career. As an adult, your time is much more valuable. 

Greeny_Green said:

Hello everyone. I need an advice. This year I am about to be a student at one of Toronto's colleges. I've seen a few related topics but these are about 2 or more years old. 

2 years is still recent. Unless something drastic changed, the advice is still relevant.

People aren't kidding when they say you can learn game art without going to school and burning a ton of cash. Ever since I graduated, I still come on Polycount to improve, and otherwise, I've been building my portfolio with knowledge gained outside of class. 

Marshkin

-deleted - Saw that this was already addressed in a duplicate thread 

NikhilR

The one thing college does help you with is making contacts local to the toronto game industry. This could grow into more professional working relationships in time.
Make sure you know why you want to join the game industry. Do you want to do art, are you more about being a part of a company that makes games you love playing?
This matters a lot. In my program 90% of the students were the latter and most of them are either unemployed or working retail.
Some are in VFX for television/movies. Figures that they never did want to be a part of game development in a major way, nor were they passionate enough about art.
There are many ways into the game industry worldwide, Ontario's game industry is more ruthless by comparison. 
Challenging to make a career out of it here if you don't know the right people, there is a lot of politics.
On the indie side its more forgiving, the OMDC and CMF provide grants for startups, a fair amount of politics here too, but easier to navigate.
As an artist, if you develop your talent sufficiently you have options outside the city/country (Depends on work visa restrictions/etc)

So while you probably don't need to go to college for game dev, it really depends on what you're trying to get out of it.
I must admit that many top devs in toronto have colleges in their pockets primarily to hire fresh graduates so that could be a reason to do a program.