At this point, my feeling is that Digipen and Fullsail are the WRONG place to go. Whenever someone sends a resume we look for either a lot of exprience and a demo or a comp sci degree. Anyone with a 'get into the industry quick' education (ie Fullsail, Digipen, CDIS ) is rejected. I don't feel that those places are up to the required standards at this time for the industry. They are pumping out students who have a narrow and shallow understanding of software development practices. This might not be true in a few years once the industry is on the upswing again and it becomes harder to find employees.

I'm not sure about other development houses; the two that I've worked at are all I can take my experiences from. I'm sure if you showed up at Electronic Arts or another larger studio you might be able to land a Junior position, but at this point I would say the four years of education you get with a Comp Sci degree gives you more time to think about what software development is, and to experience everything from basic algorithms to memory management and debugging skills.

The people I spoke with at GDC who were from Fullsail looked at me with horror when I asked them if they had to write memory management or debugging aids as part of their curriculum. I didn't even want to ask them if they knew anything about makefiles or art pipeline tools.

This frightens me - I'm expecting to have to educate juniors about game development, not about software development!

If all someone learns at Fullsail is how to program in C++ within the context of game programming then when they come into our studio they're going to be useless - we won't use the same toolkits they did, we won't use the same exporters or art toolchains, and we'll be worrying about how much memory we have free and how we can make shortcuts in asset management and algorithms to hit 60 hertz. A long history of debugging and problem solving is going to be more valuable here, no matter what language you focused at in school, then the ability to write C++ 'game code'.

Go to UF, take comp sci, and write games in your spare time. Write ANYTHING in your spare time. Write something, rewrite it, fix it, expand it. Don't worry about having a 'finished demo' until you are close to looking for a job - don't feel that you should 'finish it up' instead of moving on to something more interesting. Do everything you can to learn as much about software development in general, and games in specific. Join some online teams, try it out, see if you like working with groups full of people with big egos. Take on different roles; sound programmer, graphics programmer, ai, front end, tools, debugging aids, anything. Just keep messing around. Use the summer to do co-op terms as an intern programmer. Get real-world experience whenever you can. Become an aid to someone doing their Masters or PhD.

Well, enough ramble.

Good luck.



[edited by - Sphet on June 18, 2003 1:31:42 PM]

Weigh out your options. What are your goals? Do you really want to work at one of these big companies? Or are you more of a self-starter? If so you can learn how to make games, make or start one, and find yourself a publisher or go indi and sell it as shareware.

quote:Original post by Sphet
At this point, my feeling is that Digipen and Fullsail are the WRONG place to go. Whenever someone sends a resume we look for either a lot of exprience and a demo or a comp sci degree. Anyone with a ''get into the industry quick'' education (ie Fullsail, Digipen, CDIS ) is rejected. I don''t feel that those places are up to the required standards at this time for the industry. They are pumping out students who have a narrow and shallow understanding of software development practices. This might not be true in a few years once the industry is on the upswing again and it becomes harder to find employees.

Many of the Full Sail grads over the past couple years have had Computer Science or Software Engineering degrees from other major colleges. So I wouldn''t be so quick to reject them.

quote:Original post by Sphet
I''m not sure about other development houses; the two that I''ve worked at are all I can take my experiences from. I''m sure if you showed up at Electronic Arts or another larger studio you might be able to land a Junior position, but at this point I would say the four years of education you get with a Comp Sci degree gives you more time to think about what software development is, and to experience everything from basic algorithms to memory management and debugging skills.

The people I spoke with at GDC who were from Fullsail looked at me with horror when I asked them if they had to write memory management or debugging aids as part of their curriculum. I didn''t even want to ask them if they knew anything about makefiles or art pipeline tools.

15 months even at 8 hours a day is still not a long time. The focus is on learning how to develop games in a team atmosphere with a deadlines to meet. This doesn''t leave alot of time to spend messing around with the low level stuff, though I do agree it would be beneficial to play around with.

The art pipeline stuff is a different story as it can vary from company to company, hell it can even vary from artitst to artist. Some like photoshop and max, others like maya and paint shop pro. How would you go about developing tools for this art pipeline if you didn''t have access to the Max SDK or photoshop SDK? This is pretty much the zone that the students at full sail are at. They typically produce the majority of their own artwork for their games they don''t have to worry about art pipelines which is why there is no emphisis on the art pipeline, or the tools needed to make it efficient. This doesn''t mean that they are incapable of making any of the tools by anymeans.

quote:Original post by Sphet
If all someone learns at Fullsail is how to program in C++ within the context of game programming then when they come into our studio they''re going to be useless - we won''t use the same toolkits they did, we won''t use the same exporters or art toolchains, and we''ll be worrying about how much memory we have free and how we can make shortcuts in asset management and algorithms to hit 60 hertz. A long history of debugging and problem solving is going to be more valuable here, no matter what language you focused at in school, then the ability to write C++ ''game code''.

I couldn''t agree with you more. However I fail to see how you can get this experiance with a typical 4 year degree.

Don''t go to college. Join a cult. You don''t have to pay any taxes.

quote:Original post by coderx75

If you have no degree and no demos, but a 15 month education in game development, this shows your potential employer that your desire to be a game developer is whimsical, shows that you are detered by large undertakings and that you may not have the ability to learn new things on your own (whether this may or may not be true).

<font face="courier" size="1">
[ <a href="http://www.mp3.com/jayflaherty" target="_TOP">Here, taste this</a> ]</font>

Was that english? Because I think something got lost in the translation.

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Was that english? Because I think something got lost in the translation.

I didn''t have any trouble understanding it. Perhaps you should try to become more proficient at reading.

Oh, and "proficient" means "good".

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

SSJCORY at age 13 I wouldn''t be worrying about things like college right now I would be more worried about going into highschool in a few months!