Hi, I would just like to speak out about what I think on game degrees! I am of course a game degree student, i have currently finished my second year of university. but during my second year it suddenly and very suddenly at that, dawned upon me how little I acutally had learnt in the entire first year of university! of course our lecturers had all been drumming at us non stop " you must get a placement!!! itll be invalueable experience!!" so I thought, hell, what have I got to lose if I try, either way I managed to secure myself a 9 month placement with a games company in china!
It's a bit far from GB and a culture shock to sum up the country. However what is more important, they threw me into their training centre and I would say, within 2 weeks, I had learnt more about modeling than my entire 2 years at university. and I dont mean to be big headed or anything, but my modeling and animation skills were prehaps some of the best out of everyone I had seen on my course. so to be learning so much more in such a short period of time ( i have been here 2 months now and ive learnt even more) makes me almost pity how terrible some people who go into the third year/ finish graduating will actually be! a model we took 12 weeks to finish at uni took me about 3 days to do at work. and now i am fully greatful to the company for giving me this placement as when I get back, I will definatly be having some serious words with how our course is run and I will put foward ideas such as for a start, "uv mapping, definatly, should be taught in the first semester of the first year, not the second year second semester." and "no, we dont need to learn how to program if we do not want to ever touch programming. aka, specialize from the start".
to wrap this all up, I now have realised that the game degrees have been set up to butter people of what is due to come, but my university and many others i believe are not going to produce students who are good enough to enter the industry. I will still have my third and final year to go when I return. but i allready feel that it will be a breaze with all the new skills I should have been taught, but now have learnt!

Hi Lewis - interesting stuff! Can you drop me a line on michael[dot]french[at]intentmedia[dot]co[dot]uk?

This article is referencing the situation in the UK, but there are other game courses out there too. I am from the UK but happen to have attended Full Sail in the US and got a job right out of there.
Lewis has said you should specialize early and I'm not sure that is a great idea. We covered lots of topics that I will probably not touch again, but that is because I have now specialised in my role at work. Presumably there is some kind of Final Project to complete as part of your degree so you could perhaps start specializing there.
Students need to look carefully at the content to be covered in a degree after doing some research into the kind of stuff they think they should be learning.

I work in the wonderful world of business applications and I can say that the situation with computer science graduates isn't much better. Increasingly I find that fundamental skills are glossed over or even lacking entirely, and that it's the self taught programmers who have a much tighter grasp on traditional computer science principles.

Hey Ashley, i'd just like to clarify what I meant by specilizing earlier. In our second year we split up from covering every topic in tiny sections to either going down the coding route, or going down the artistic route; down these routes we still do study maths and mechanics, however I have personally chosen the art route therefore I do more work on modeling and animation, while the coding route obviously work on techniqes behind coding programs and ai and so forth. Everyone ive talked to at my uni agrees, that before the entered university that they really knew which route they would have taken anyways, and that having a whole year before speciliazing prehaps was just too long! eitherway, I personally feel that my course needs an overhaul since ive been out in china. Also a freind has got a placement working for Jagex and he claims that many other people who have come from other universitys know even less than him and that some of their capabilities are practically shocking! Anyways I lost where I was going with this really but my point is I agree with this artical!

I have heard this quite a lot recently, I am currently looking at which Universities to apply for and which courses to do, and many of the computer games courses emphasize how easy it is to get a job with one of their degrees. However, people I have been discussing this with seem to disagree wholeheartedly, this article included.
If the computer games course is so undesirable, is there one that might be better suited to the games industry? Obviously every job is different, but for someone looking to start programming games, would a computer science degree be more suitable?

Hi, I'm going to be going to Glamorgan university to study BSC Computer Games Development. Firstly I would like to ask if any of you could give some advice as to whether the modules are any good, or similar to the courses you took (link is http://www.glam.ac.uk/coursedetails/686/53" onclick="window.open ( this.href ); return false;" class="comment_url" >http://www.glam.ac...86/53 ). I would also like to say what a shambles the skillset accreditation is, as the Glamorgan BA in computer studies is accredited, yet the BSc isn't, so is this just out of a lack of pursuing it or is the course not up to par. Also, i think there is a lot of talk around the subject, yet there seems to be very little action on the subject of the contents of these courses. I had already applied before the Games Up campaign had kicked off, so understandably I am nervous as to whether I am about to waste 3 or 4 years of my life. I would just appreciate if someone would say that the courses need to contain "x, y and z" as opposed to saying that theyre simply not sufficient. Sorry if this comes off as a bit rantish lol

thanks, Rhys

What's clear from this thread is that these "Game Degree's" (sic) should include a remedial English class.

This is very much the same as what happened in the mid Ninties and the IT course boom. Any Jack and Danny could apply and the market now is full of grads lacking the correct comerical skillsets.
One thing that I have noticed is the standard of the Tutors teaching is what needs to be improved, and Industry leaders should dictate what is taught. I also think that for some Uni's the selection process should be harder. Completing Double Dragon with just 10p and no continues in the arcade does not warrant suitability to design and develop games.

To Lewis: Id like to ask him which Uni he's going to and When you went to china was their any language problems?

Oh my, I'm so very tired of addressing this issue. The trouble is, that this is such a generalisation. Of course there are poor games courses, much like there are poor CS courses or poor geography courses. But does that somehow make studying geography worthless?

We had the same kind of retoric from David Jaffrey of EA, which said he was only really interested in "Red Brick" Universities. He wasnt aware that some of our graduates from Bolton already worked for him obviously. Same for Sony and plenty of other studios.

My advice would be to look long and hard at ANY course you are going to do, see wether the things they teach are informed by the industry. The skillset accreditation is a bit of a red herring because it was only available to courses which have had a full year of graduates at the time and was also only based on one subject. The skillset programme is opening up a bit now thankfully.

The main thing is to do your homework and make sure you are going to a solid course, but don't expect the course to do everything for you.

Phil.

Before starting your course try and figure out what your best skillset is. If you want to program learn as much as possible about c++ from the ground up. Go to www.gamedev.net and try and do as much as possible so you have an idea of what you are getting into. If you are an artistic person and are aiming for modelling and animation get a trial software like 3D Studio Max and see how far you go with the tutorials.

This way you will have an idea of what to specialise on your final year project.

Main thing is work hard and dont expect the course to do all the work for you as Phil just mentioned.

Nim

Having looked at some of the typo-strewn posts from students - and sadly too many CVs look the same - I have to recommend a basic literacy course before considering a degree. :)

As a rule of thumb, if a games degree is grouped with graphic design and other "meejah" subjects, then avoid it like the plague. Please: get a sensible degree, that will at least count towards getting another kind of job if your career in games fails to take off.

If developers are unhappy with the quality of graduates then why don't *they* do something about it? Get involved with your local University. Learn about their curriculum and suggest relevant changes. Believe it or not, they *will* listen to you!

There's no point in being elitist about who we do or do not employ. Students are our future employees so it's up to us to make sure they are receiving the correct education.

I imagine that a great number of game execs COULD remember the last time they hired someone from a game degree program, so the memory of one particular exec shouldn't be enough to question the entire game education industry.

A particular individual's abilities have less to do with the program he or she attended and more to do with the individual. Whether in a game-centric program or a standard computer science program, it is up to the student to go the extra mile to apply what they are learning correctly.

It is also important to really investigate any program you are thinking of spending $30000 or more on! My personal thoughts are that programs that offer an actual degee (e.g. Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science) are more valuable than those that do not. However, our company has hired people from a variety of different programs and backgrounds. To say you wouldn't hire someone just BECAUSE they went to a game degree program seems short-sighted, indeed.

One more note. My son attended Full Sail, which provied a wide variety of exposure (in other words, is not paritcularly speicalized). It took hard work and several months to land his first job, but once he got there his wide range of skills was invaluable as he ended up havig to switch projects and tackle diverse problems.

I am also a game programmer and find my traditional Computer Science degree prepared me well as a programmer, but I had to enhance that with self-study for the game-speicifics. There is no such thing as a time that you stop learning in this field.

R