I'd like to hear folks' thoughts on studio / university partnerships in education: -how common are they -how successful / unsuccessful are they for either party (what do studios see as their incentives in teaming up with a university)? The obvious benefits to the university would be a quality program to produce quality…
to those outside of the programs, its seen as a tool for the studios to get cheap labor and makes it harder for those 'not in' the program to even get replies from the studios, since they have a never ending trickle of cheap labor coming from the schools.
The Art Institute of San Diego CA and Sony Online Entertainment collaborate in the Sony Mentionship Program. The program is a 6 month program/2 quarter class project between students and SOE. Students are to design a level based around one of SOE IP and create the level in the Unreal 3 engine. Every other week SOE would…