theres so much interesting shit you can do with a proper computer science background coupled with perhaps some grad work in other areas that i wonder why do people give a shit about games at all. you could be modeling physics or biology stuff instead rather than detect collisions for your swordsman lv 25

or linguistics and become a cyberphilosopher (next generation of great thinkers on par with the enlightenment greats: whoever invents an eletronic system that can actually use language and communicate with a living breathing human in a nuanced and idiomatic way (use real language))

what is it about a career in game design that draws so many people to it???? i mean i like to play me a nintendogame every once in a while but I feel like if I had to sit in a cube writing thousands of lines of code to make a character's breasts bounce like she was jumping around on the moon or sit around for 40 hours a week running into every wall in every level of a game trying to find collision flaws I would probably hate videogames forever

Well, to be honest you just covered only two jobs. I guess artists with an interest in video games would really enjoy a job in the industry.

Well, to be honest you just covered only two jobs. I guess artists with an interest in video games would really enjoy a job in the industry.

yeah but they're not really involved with the 'design' of the game like programmers or QA are.

I'm in a degree right now that sort of looks like what you described your game design degree was, except its oriented towards art and general design rather than game design. Most of our courses are about 2d and 3d animation, sound edition, video edition, flash and web design.

From what my teachers and the industry people they brought in to talk to us say:
The one most important thing you have to handle right if you want any job as a designer, no matter what type of design it is, is to follow trends and technology, and be up to date with it all. Things happen so fast. For instance, around 2007 and 2008 there was a significant new element in the world of web design: fast, reliable real time 3d to be used in flash.  http://www.papervision3d.org/  Before that, people who wanted to include 3d animations or effects in web pages had to either pre-render movies or do some fake 3d-ish effects. With that arrival, web design changed considerably, and for a while design companies and advertising firms would only hire people who could use that and could innovate based on that new hot tool. The craze died down soon enough, and then other trends popped up. Advertisement sites for movies and the like all milked that new thing dry. Its still being used a lot naturally but its lots its original shine and is sort of just another useful thing out there now.
Creative, technology-based jobs are like a crazy arms race, where a new bigger badder nuke appears on the market every now and then. And if you cant get that nuke while its hot, you're out of a job. Design is dirty and evil and ruthless. Professionally at least. As a hobby its just fun and games, its two completely different worlds.

About the game design course, I don't think it could really be useless. Colleges usually work very closely with the source of the jobs' demands, if they didn't know what the industry needs they would be out of a business. Usually teachers there come from the industry and know about how fast its world moves. Well it is the feeling I got from my own teachers at least, who keep bringing in big designer peoples from the advertisement, game design, animation, movie making and web design industries. They talk about their experiences, how the creative process goes, the kind of problems they encounter, the overall atmosphere and competition, the new trends.

The design world is pretty much Galactus and you are some dude somewhere and Galactus doesn't even care you exist and just eats you up and you die unless you're SUPERMAN because then Galactus sort of acknowledges you're there before eating you up.

About the game design course, I don't think it could really be useless. Colleges usually work very closely with the source of the jobs' demands, if they didn't know what the industry needs they would be out of a business.

The problem isn't knowing what the industry needs, the problem is that there are very few jobs in the game industry and most of them require previous experience that you tend to need from a broader field.  Also, most of them are coding jobs that have nothing to do with you doing any of the design for the game, so all those classes on "making fun games" aren't helping you.  You're basically getting a horribly retarded version of a CS degree that cuts corners, and so you won't be able to get any of those jobs that get you INTO the industry in order to work your way up to some sort of design.  Game design degrees will exist whether or not there are ANY jobs available in the industry because of people who want to be the guy who tightens up the graphics and makes "the best game ever". 

Like the article I posted earlier said, if you want to get a game design degree that's excellent, but you should get a degree in CS (or art or whatever you're focusing on in the industry) first, and then take the game design courses on top of that.  I could see that as being very beneficial, but a straight game design degree is a waste.

Hey, there are worst school programs out there than game design: http://kotaku.com/5141355/competitive-starcraft-gets-uc-berkeley-class

Actually that's really not as bad as it could be.  It's pretty stupid, but you can take badminton and stuff as a class too, it's basically just a "show up and participate and get a half credit for it" thing.  It's run by a student and it's just a bullshit whatever-we-want-to-have-a-class-on class, instead of an entire degree in which you aren't doing anything else.


All schools have bullshit classes, at least none of them are bullshit degrees

props to velfarre's first driving someone into a meltdown. you killed bridgeman, good job.

That guy was already a mess, he made a thousand "how often do you say fuck how often do you fart?????" topics way before i had a go at him


though driving someone to be so crazy they make a beetleborgs topic is one i'll put on my resume

With big game developers like EA or whatever, of course game design jobs are rare, most employees there just work on a product without ever being really part of its concept. Actually, even the top designers in companies have very little creative freedom and must usually work in the confines of the intellectual property the game is based on, etc.

But the big companies arn't the only ones out there, there are thousands of smaller companies that make games for mobile phones, handheld consoles, board games, casual games. These companies are often very small teams of people who work closely together, and often they have way more creative freedom in what they do. Of course, these companies don't offer the same kind of job safety a big company does, and you are very unlikely to ever work on a AAA game there.

Also, I am pretty sure that this game design degree isn't really about game design, but really about getting a job in the gaming industry in general. I am pretty sure the basic idea is to train people all around and get them specific jobs that might or might not eventually lead to a more creative one, especially 3d modelers, which game companies need a lot of.

The idea of getting anyone hired as a game designer right off the bat is ridiculous: you CAN'T be hired as a designer if you just have a degree. You need experience, it doesn't matter what school you are from. No company will just pick you up and give you the creative lead of a project they put money into, unless you have a lot of creative background and experience. That doesn't just apply for the games industry, its for any kind of design-related job. The teachers cannot possibly be telling their students that a game design job will be open to them when they have a degree, the only way for that to happen is if they go on their own.

even though i don't aspire to be a game developer, i don't think it'd be a bad job doing the more "boring/non creative" parts of a game. it'd still be pretty cool to be in that atmosphere and learn the ropes of it all.

what you said is true about needing lots of experience for creative lead, frankie, but almost any job requires experience to do the good/fun stuff. i think even the "boring" parts of game making would be interesting!

even though i don't aspire to be a game developer, i don't think it'd be a bad job doing the more "boring/non creative" parts of a game. it'd still be pretty cool to be in that atmosphere and learn the ropes of it all.

It's not that it's a horrible job (depends on specifically how menial of a job you get), it's just that the majority of the people I've seen wanting to go into this field aren't willing to do that job.  They think the job is sitting around coming up with game ideas and telling other people to make them, not to sit down and do really basic coding on a game being overseen by someone many levels above you.  It's the expectations that are the issue here, not the job itself.  Working in the game industry would probably be pretty cool if you know what you're getting into, but a lot of these people don't!

Well

What is wrong with wanting getting a game design degree REALLY?  Like it is not more useless than a music degree or a Political Science degree really.  There are just as many opportunities to be a rock star or a governor.  And, it is still college.  I guess there are better career paths but going to college is still going to college.

Also almost everyone commenting on the games industry here actually knows nothing about it?  I think a few of you are like comissioned artists or something though.  You are placing it up on this pedastal and acting like the people who do it do not make $30,000 per year and are ordinary people that applied for a job and were hired after an interview.  It is telling that there are job postings on the websites at all, because most of the arguments about it being worthless to try and get in tell me you think working on games means you need to be admitted to a secret society.

Also like penii said, working on the boring part of a game is probably at least as much fun as any other job.  Having a disposable job working on a cool video game would be at least as cool as having a disposable job doing anything else.

fffff no one said there was anything wrong with working in the game industry the problem is that game design degrees don't exactly lead to getting a job in the game industry, that's why it's a waste, you don't have to be in the industry to read the requirements for a game job and look at game design programs and realize that a cs (or art or whatever you were focusing on in game design) degree would have better prepared you

Medieve did fine art and he's doing concepts for sony.

yeah, you're right that a lot of people are misinformed.

unless you are gung-ho about a job in game development and none other, then i think a degree in it can be helpful. i'm sure it depends on the school. there is a college nearby that seems really lame. there are commercials for it which alone supports the lameness.

at my school though, the program probably OVER prepared you. a lot of people had to drop out of it cause they couldn't do it. they studied programming, computers, art, 3d stuff, design, engineering courses, etc. a program like this could help you get a job in game development or other things as well.

if there isn't a school that offers this close to person deciding, i think velfarre is right that it's better to get a specific part degree.

at my school though, the program probably OVER prepared you. a lot of people had to drop out of it cause they couldn't do it. they studied programming, computers, art, 3d stuff, design, engineering courses, etc. a program like this could help you get a job in game development or other things as well.

Unless I am misunderstanding you, this is actually just as bad as a game design course!  There is only so much you can learn in the average 4 years of college.  The more you try to cram in those 4 years, the less detailed you can get into any specific area.  You know the saying, "Jack of all trades, master of none."  They want you to be a master of your skillset.  For example, if you want to be a programmer, get a CS degree and know your shit when it comes to game programming.  No one is going to care if you can make models in Max, or whatever.  I am a programmer, I don't design anything, I don't do art, I don't do whatever other bullshit thing they claim you need to know in those game programming courses.  This is just how it is.  I'm not saying that it isn't good to have those extra skills!  I can definitely see the benefit in a tools programmer knowing how to use Max or whatever.  However, they still expect you to be an excellent programmer.  Not just passable at everything.