Say I were to go to a regular state college example: University of Fla or UNF and take classes in programming aimed towards game development would that make it any harder to get a job in the field than if I were to go to a school like full sail or digipen? Thanx for your input. Favorite Quotes:Gandalf: You shall not pass!|Gollum: My Precious!|Smeagol: My little hobbitses.|

Uhh no. I suggest you go to FIU because it has one of the best CS programs in the country. Okay, just kidding! UF is always considered one of the best Math and Science schools. Basically from what many have said on the subject it is best to seek a traditional CS degree in most cases because you will have knowledge that can apply to many facets in software engineering rather than just gaming. This is just in case you wanted to branch out to something else etc.

To be honest, I would think it might make things easier for you. If you take Comp Sci, then you''ve got job opportunities in a much wider field than if you''ve taken games. Some developer houses might also prefer that you''ve not been ''taught games'' so that they can teach you their own methods.

The downside is that you''ll have to teach yourself most of what would otherwise have been handed to you, the game-specific stuff.

I think this topic has been beaten to death. I hate to seem like an ass, but please do a search...

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quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Don't goto FullSail. Search the topic to find out why. Specifically, read the failure stories.

You honestly need to take the failure stories with a grain of salt and understand that not everyone can be successful. There are numerous reasons why and how someone could fail, perhaps they weren't prepaired for the program, perhaps they didn't put enough effort into it, perhaps they aren't cut out to do game development, perhaps after finishing up the classes they decided it wasn't what they wanted to do...the list can go on and on. It all depends on how you measure success and failure. I can gaurentee anyone who's gone to full sail even if they've failed out knows much more about game development than they did previously and quite frankly that's the entire point of going there isn't it?

I'll be the first to admit that Full Sail is not for everyone. And I'll also tell you stright up that Full Sail can't gaurentee you a job, no college on earth can do that. What Full Sail does do is take a tremendous ammount of knowledge that it would otherwise take you years to learn on your own and teaches it to you in rougly 15 months. When you graduate you'll be able to make just about any type of game you want with a little bit of research on your part. If this is your goal then perhaps it's right for you but again don't expect any miricales like graduating and working at Square Soft fresh out of school, if it happens it's great but I wouldn't bet on it.

Joseph Fernald
Full Sail Grad Nov '00
Software Engineer
Redstorm Entertainment

[edited by - evaclear on June 18, 2003 11:35:50 AM]