How effective are game design courses?
Hi there guys.
I am currently a game design student writing my dissertation on the rise of game design degrees and their impact on the industry, and the students who take them.
I have a great deal of respect for the Polycount community so I felt that I could ask for your opinions on the subject, and get some insightful answers. (This is not to say I'm in need of things to write about).
My research question in full is "How effective are BA videogame design courses and how are they shaping the UK games industry?"
Understandably 'effective' is a highly contentious word and context sensitive in all its uses, but I feel that it's appropriate here because in my eyes there are three distinct areas to this study, they are universities, students and the game industry itself. The answer to the question clearly pivots on the various definitions of the word.
For example, a student might consider the degree effective if it clearly enhances his/her chances of employment, whereas the university may believe that being effective is not to do with gaining employment at all, but instead if the course is successful, i.e. if it persistently is a popular degree and brings in a good number of new students each year.
Not to get too distracted by semantics, I would like to know what you guys think about the state of games design as formal education and what impact its having on the industry.
I am currently a game design student writing my dissertation on the rise of game design degrees and their impact on the industry, and the students who take them.
I have a great deal of respect for the Polycount community so I felt that I could ask for your opinions on the subject, and get some insightful answers. (This is not to say I'm in need of things to write about).
My research question in full is "How effective are BA videogame design courses and how are they shaping the UK games industry?"
Understandably 'effective' is a highly contentious word and context sensitive in all its uses, but I feel that it's appropriate here because in my eyes there are three distinct areas to this study, they are universities, students and the game industry itself. The answer to the question clearly pivots on the various definitions of the word.
For example, a student might consider the degree effective if it clearly enhances his/her chances of employment, whereas the university may believe that being effective is not to do with gaining employment at all, but instead if the course is successful, i.e. if it persistently is a popular degree and brings in a good number of new students each year.
Not to get too distracted by semantics, I would like to know what you guys think about the state of games design as formal education and what impact its having on the industry.
Replies
And no one should expect everything to be handed to them in a class room, there are always going to be things you have to learn on your own, school exposes you to knowledge, then you should go seek out more for yourself.
Those who take responsibility for their own education are the ones who are successful, no matter which way they go about finding their information.
Righto! I started at DeVry (HAHAHAHA) in Game and Simulation programming. I regret that decision, but I'm almost done so it's too late now (I'm already 70k in the hole between Devry and previous schools I tried), I'm not wasting more money on school. If you want to do something in game design, get an English degree, or something that involves writing, that way you have something to fall back on if the industry takes a dump or gets flooded with designers
There are very very few degree programs worth their weight, 99% of them are taught by people not in the industry with old information you can readily get elsewhere on the net for free or via sites like gnomon, digitaltutors, eat3d, etc... none of the schools out there are worth $70k to $100k+ for a degree in games. It's just simple economics the knowledge to money expenditure is just too great it's way out of whack, and here in the states if the loans are causing you to go into bankruptcy too bad, they don't count and will follow you because they can't be waived via bankruptcy. I'm paying $200 a month in interest alone on my school loans, that's ridiculous. Game design courses are the devil and are predatory. These schools get people in and get paid 'by the seat' each school rep gets paid commision on each seat filled. You pay exorbitant fees to a school where you can get 90% of the education on your own. The other 10% you can get by working with a mod team.
I have a bachelors in Computer Animation and it simply wasn't worth the cash. Thankfully I had an IT background to fall back on if something changes, and a great wife with a great job helping pay off my school loans.
Is school good for those that may not have the will to do it for themselves? Sure, but I saw just as many kids in school paying for classes and failing and didn't care. I saw folks putting their school loans on credit cards and getting into tremendous debt for this wonderful promise of a 'game job' when they graduated and luckily I knew about polycount and worked hard and got a job via networking on this site or I'd still be out of work as well. I saw people while in school playing WoW instead of doing their work.. It made me sick thinking of paying 1200 for a semester for one class and playing a game when I should be learning.
Either way, I see your point but I think you are an exception. The majority of folks won't graduate. Out of a class of about 30 only about 5 are expected to actually graduate.
Example of this: Devry teaches people how to make games in Torque (not the new one, the OLD engine). I had programming classes in High School, I learned more in High school than I did at Devry, mainly because 90% of my professors had no idea about games.
The best advice I can give you after my 5 year journey after high school: Join a mod team. I learned more working with Warm Gun than I have anywhere else.
Also it was $30,000 a year, which in this economy is a little like a punch in the mouth.
I'll agree with you. I did a 3 year game degree. My course director at the time had no idea what he was doing, never worked at a single game studio.. never even worked on a game as far as I know.
Every time I look at my degree I laugh and shake my head.
If your going to pursue a game design course. Do your self a favor and research the school and who is running the program. Make sure they are qualified to run such a course.
edit - This is true. While my class was small to begin with, only 8 out of 18 graduated.
I find the correlation between the general accepted traits of publishers (to discourage innovation because its safer not to) and the reluctance of developers to hire graduates, who have been marked on innovation for their entire university 'career'. I don't know if there's genuinely anything in that, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.
I totally agree with you here, I know all about the debt, and all about the outdated teaching, but I will not deny that I didn't know ANYTHING about games or modeling or 3d before I came to school. If I hadn't gone to school I wouldn't have known where to even look for places like polycount or anything. I was a naive 18 year old with a dream to be an artist and no idea how to make that possible. School made that possible for me, and even though it was totally not worth the amount of money I paid for it, it did get me somewhere.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing all these people that do manage to graduate blame their school for their lack of success. It is their fault for not taking responsibility for what they need to know, and building on what the school gives them, even if it is minimal. I hear just as many success stories as I do failures and the only thing that separates these two kinds of people is their drive and passion to no let anything stop them, not debt, not a shitty school, nothing.
But about the price of education yes, thats total BS but its only this way because our government has allowed it to get this way, and hopefully that is changing.
But if you are 18 and you do manage to know more that I did at that age and you feel like you can learn what you need to know without school and have enough self discipline to do that then more power to you!
Because of this, there are precious few established standards that have persisted. Many of the older developers from the early days no longer make games. And their instruction would not be relevant given the current nature of game development. Most of the people who would be qualified to "teach" game development are currently in the games industry, and probably don't have any plans of leaving. (game development usually pays better than teaching)
The only way that a modern game development university could both function, and provide current instruction, is for it to act as a game development studio itself. A game studio that was run by a team of experienced designers, and all the employees were students.
or are we talking about game art design, modelling, textureing etc?
edit: btw Richard: from what I could gather my university lecturers were on a pretty good wage, lecuring certainly didn't seem like that unattractive a prospect apart from the danger of losing touch with the industry. One of my co-workers recently took up a lecturing gig, and he doesnt seem to be complaining.
It sounds to me like there's a little disparity in america versus UK (which the dissertation is on), I certainly don't get the predatory vibe from our institutions (I may be wrong), although I can agree with the sentiment there is generally far too little direct industry involvement with the courses
OMG! I am so sorry.
i guess it's smaller places which don't have the two degrees seperately which are the issue?
Yes, I really REALLY wish I wouldn't have even started there. If I absolutely had to start over, I would have went to Full Sail (because I need an online solution, when I started at Devry, Full Sail didn't have their online program). I hear a statement a while back and I think it's completely true: "If you see a TV commercial for a school, don't go there"
But its a new course + here in belgium we practicly pay nothing to get educated ( 750 euros max or so for people who pay the full price and licenses included. i payed about 200 euro this year)
anyway our teachers are young people who also look at the new things that are on the market so i would`t say that the things we learn are useless especially if you consider the price.
Now if i`d have to pay $70k for it i wouldn`t take the course
But if you already had a goal of becoming a game artist before going to uni, then I believe taking a game design course would be useless. If you wanted a degree and the "uni experience", there are loads of other courses to take which would be more useful and not feel like a waste of money.
Not true, the majority of people do graduate, they just won't get a job anywhere near the games industry. Especially game design courses, they are so easy to pass that you'd have to try to fail on purpose
It is true that some of them will probably leave the course midway through and many will think that THIS is how you make games. But those who develop some sort of interest and motivation can expand their horizons in their free time (and considering that most of my friends are living off loans, they have plenty of it). I'm pretty sure that if they didn't go to university, they would be probably working their asses off - and it's really hard to motivate yourself to learn when you work full time.
There's plenty of bulshitting though and some of the modules are completely irrelevant. Photography and proper behaviour in a TV studio? I fail to see a connection to the games industry. Nevertheless, I have heard plenty of times that universities are reluctant to create games only courses, hence why theres some general crap mixed in.
Personally, I do see some positives in me staying there; though my background is probably slightly different than most. Being a Polish-immigrant-scum I have received a one-in-life chance of getting myself a sexy English accent; no woman will ever want a guy who speaks like a lawnmower combined with a dishwasher. Had I stayed in my country, I would hardly have a chance to stay in touch with the language. But here I have a chance to grow up being accustomed to living abroad; something thats very often a part of the deal in this biz.
A degree will be a bonus if I ever decide to leave the EU; a recent thread reassured me that this paper might be worth something after all. Furthermore, Ive seen some job postings before, which had game design degree listed a as a requirement. I have no hopes of receiving this kind of position, right after I graduate (reason why I picked up modelling), but diploma might become useful once I get some work experience.
I do not expect to learn much here, apart from maintaining some sort of discipline and getting a test of social-life I wouldnt have if I stayed in my basement pimping my portfolio. But I do have a chance to talk with people about the stuff I love and that keeps me motivated.
Just some general thoughts, hope they were somewhat relevant
Rooster: Slightly off topic; but I've been meaning to ask someone from the local companies about it. What's your opinion on my university and its graduates? From what I've heard, the local companies (Mere Mortals, Eutechnyx and Ubi Reflections) have been working somewhat closely with us.
I find that if people are in a bad program, they`ll blame their lack of skill on the program, even though they have everything at their finger tips (internet) to learn everything they need to know.
so, if you need a little push to get you to do some work. go for it. just, do your research first like brandoom said. and dont follow EXACTLY what teachers want you to do. if you think they are teaching something wrong, sacrifice your marks for a better piece of work.
I know that the Art Institute corporate office doesn't give a shit if we have teachers currently in the industry or not, but I know that the head of the Animation department at the Art Institute of Dallas sure did. Since I started school he brought in 3 new teachers who had recently or currently were working in the industry and that definitely helped a lot of people out.
There are local workshops and meetings going on constantly here in Dallas and I know that I always knew about them at school. There were lots of efforts from people in the community to organize and give students a chance to network and learn from professionals, and if someone in every city did this and got involved with schools in the area then everyone could share that same experience.
Because sure we could sit around all day and complain how the system is flawed, and how we don't get enough from our education. OR we could start DOING something about it!
THIS..............IS............POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYCCCCOOOOOOOOUUUUUNNNNNNNTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry I couldn't resist...
Tony took Diverge down to Austin with him.
Just had to LOOOOOOOOOOOL
lots of us are on irc.freenode.net #model_design
Good to know. Now I can annoy more people with my retarded questions :P
What a lot of people don't get is that for many of the students that attend these institutions, it's their only chance to get this knowledge. Many of them have talent and desire but don't have the ACT or SAT scores to get into a traditional university. Should that disqualify them from developing their talents? No. Unfortuantely, though, this kind of for-profit educational system produces a lot of inconsistiencies. That can include teachers that don't know their subject or degree-holding graduates that couldn't model a crate or UV unwrap a barrel. Ultimately, as has been said by several in this thread already, you will get out of your education what you put into it, and it's only a springboard to more knowledge.
I'll admit that I've never drawn a paycheck from a game company, or even worked on a released title. But I can mod a lot of games, use a number of game engines, and create quality game art for both 2D and 3D platforms. And that's a hell of a lot more than anyone here could do before I got my job. The game design program was in the toilet when I arrived and I have successfully turned it around, as evidenced by a nearly 100% attendance rate and exceptional student evaluations. But what about all the other campuses? It really chafes me when I think that so many other institutions are probably in the same or worse shape as I found this one. However, there's very little I can do to change the corporate beast, so I choose to focus on my own corner of the world.
So to wrap up, you have to get that knowledge somewhere, and for many, watching a 13-year old on YouTube show you how to UV Unwrap isn't cutting it. Those people should go to school to learn more. On the flip side, if you found yourself able to figure out 3DS or Maya or UnrealEd without much help, you probably don't need a game design degree. You should still get a more generalized degree or even a computer science degree. There are many problems with the state of game education, but ultimately, if it's really that important to you, you will do whatever it takes to learn the trade. Finding a job in the industry is a completely different story - however, there are very few degree programs in ANY field that guarantee placement. It's still up to you to get out there, sell yourself and your portfolio, move to a state or country that actually has game companies, and have the sheer will to make your dreams a reality.
goddamnit Jeremy!
Also. I don't care about your degree. Just talent and personality.
More directly though, the "Game Design" bit of any degree can be bit of a joke. If you want to break in and earn some money making games, you need a tangible skill that will help in the creation of games, be it programming, animation, art, rigging, etc. People with big ideas for games are literally everywhere. Companies don't hire inexperienced people for these positions and most all designers script and get their actual hands on the game, they don't sit around in a room telling people to make a game that isn't technically possible, they're directly ingrained in its development.
If you want to do game design, i would highly recommend learning to program/ script first in a common engine. No one's going to sit around and make your ideas happen for you. You need to get yourself to a level with game engines that you can make your own stuff. The game design degree is too often just a bunch of fluff without giving students the tools to produce portfolio pieces that will get them a job.
Heh. If you think we have too much off topic here....
If anyone is interested in reading my wip dissertation then send me a message. I'm always happy to have a discussion.
This is one of the areas where a place like Polycount really helps. Someone from a tech background who isn't familiar with some art basics can learn a lot here. And someone who comes from more of a Studio art background probably wouldn't be familiar with a lot of the tech standards that go into proper game modeling. (polycounts, edge loops, proper edge flow, UV optimization, etc...) If you can sculpt crazy-well, but you can't construct a properly optimized low-poly mesh to apply that sculpture to, you aren't much use to most game companies.
My time with polycount has been valuable because I get criticism on the artistic and technical aspects of my work.
I've noticed this as well; I thought at first that it was only my impression though. More so, I've been browsing through job postings on Gamasutra a while ago and I've noticed that some of them had game design degrees listed as either requirement or benefit. While I'm sure that most of these courses do not meet industry's standards yet, it seems that they are slowly improving.
Part of my course (the one which is actually related to the games industry
Why can't game design courses actually focus on design? Is there anywhere that actually teaches you how to construct a level for maximum playability, or how to fit all the pieces together for a compelling game?
It's like a graphic design course teaching you nothing but how to use Photoshop. Sure, it's related to graphic design, but it's not actually teaching you how to design...
For what it's worth to the OP, I did a degree in Animation and while it helped me to get a job it was basically useless as far as skills go. I learnt more after I finished through the use of forums and training DVDs.
But as for the "effective" game design schools, I think it depends on your idea of effectiveness: for production and career placement, I hear Digipen and Guildhall are good... but for an artistic, experimental, theoretical leaning, I hear USC is great, and ITU Copenhagen, Parsons, SCAD, CMU and MIT are pretty good in their own right too.
That could count as my answer, I think.
Frank the Avenger
It really depends on what your goals are. I find that most people find a school that meets their needs.
If a person wants to just clock time while paying cash for a worthless degree, they find the school to do that.
If the person wants an actual education that will help them grow and actually get a job they'll find the right place to do that.
As far as art and animation go, how they get to an awesome portfolio is up to them, just don't expect to get by without it.
Haha, you win.
Now, As someone who hires people, I say that Portfolio is king for artists.
"Game designer", is not an entry level job, and It's obvious that schools are not disclosing that tidbit because it's harder to sell you on working for years in various lower level tasks, only to end up a designer on some small part of the game.
Game design is not all sitting around coming up with characters and stories; it's massive amounts of work detailing functional specifications and solving both technical and functional/artistic problems. Game dev schools keep trying to shove the "FUN" of it in your face, and I feel generally not preparing you for the work of it.
They make it sound like you graduate, then get hired as Will Wright; to make your game the way you want. It's just not true, and I can't help but lose respect for a lot of these programs because of that. Oh, and the "pew pew, tighten up the gfx" commercials don't help.
[ame]
Can you believe we get paid to do this?