I was just looking at USC's video game program. I noticed that recently, within the past few years many "top-level" US universities have opened up game design or game making programs. Do you think this has changed or is changing US-made video games? In the past no one had a class on how to do that,  you learned by passion, personal drive, and lots of time... that's how I've learned the things I know about video games. The educational programs would also probably force the students to take a critical view point of video games and society. Probably paying lots of attention to the niche markets in video games. Not that it hasn't been done in the past but I wonder if this will bring a new, different approaches to the way video games are conceptually designed and the audiences they reach or are intended to reach.

Should video games have an academic approach?
Has or do you think the educational programs will change it?
What do you think about these programs?

Discuss!

Theres a huge market for video games and with our world becoming more digital every year things like game design/programing makes sense.

Actually if you want to make games you apparently need to know things like chemistry, mathematics, geography, robotics, physics, graphics and design, and english/literature or whatever depending on what you want to do. Some game making degree won't help but that fancy degree in science will if your good at programming/ or coding.

Thanks for the responses. I agree with you all. I'm doing an art degree so that I can practice skills in order to work in that dept. of video games. For an industry that utilizes creativity (in art and programming) it's really about a portfolio and the actual products rather than a degree. And yeah, like you said ed, a more generalized degree can lead you to take some other jobs in anything that needs X or Y.

I agree that a game design degree will not necessarily be the best thing. I wanted to know if you think it will affect upcoming games? Is there anything positive about such specialization? Does anyone know about how films changed after film schools became popular?

Yea I'm going to school for "Gaming, Simulation, and Robotics" which unless I've been lied to give's you a Bachelor's in Computer Science, and it's identical to the CS course at the school except I have one "Game Design" class where I learn how to make Design Docs or something. My school is just opening up a new program called "Game Design" which counts as an Art Degree I guess, and most of the GSR people are switching over (because they can't program lol!) and I am fairly content that while I have a job programming they will be working at mcdonalds.

moral of the story Game Design programs are worthless and most people who go into them think that if they get that degree then they get to make their dream video games (most of them which would be as good as the average rpgmaker game) without having to do hard work (like programming crap!!). It's a trick by colleges/universities to get more money!

The problem I see is these schools/courses probably don't have any leverage when applying for a job. When you look at any job application for a game studio, most of the time they ask for a degree in a certain field. IE Programmers require Bachelors in Computer Science.