Quote:Original post by Ampd533
Hi, I just had a couple of questions I wanted to ask.

I am currently taking Computer Science at a 2 year school and then I am going to transfer to a 4 year and continue in Computer Science.

Questions

1. Is game development a realistic path to go for as a career? I know you can make good money if you get a good job. But, how realistic is it to get a job after college?

It's no more or less realistic than any other career path. The only person who can tell you if you'll succeed is you: we have insufficient data to give you a useful prognosis.

Yes, it can pay well. It can also pay peanuts. It depends on how good you are at your chosen profession, as well as how good you are at spotting opportunities and taking advantage of them.


All I can offer is some advice:

I'd suggest looking at doing some small-scale games and building up a portfolio / demo reel which you can use to get yourself a job later on. As you learn more, you'll probably cull some older projects and add new ones. The key is to not only build demos, but finish what you start. Commitment is an important selling point and the best way to prove you can commit to a project over the long haul is to show some projects you've already completed.

Oh yes: there are some parts of the job you'll find boring, but necessary. The difference between the pro and the wannabe is that the pro will push through the boring stuff and finish the job.

Quote:
2. What classes should I focus on? (Programming? C++/C#)?

C# is probably the easiest to learn for a beginner. C++ is still quite popular in the industry, but tends to be more common in lower-level engine code rather than in the game logic layer. The latter is increasingly built using a programming language like Lua or Python.

Don't let anyone trick you into believing any one language is a "standard", because there's no such thing in the games industry. It's also utterly irrelevant: 10 years ago, there were posters on these very forums extolling the virtues of assembly language as the "standard" in the games industry. It is the nature of any IT industry that technologies will have their day in the sun, then gradually fade into the background as another new toy comes to the fore.

By the time you leave school, any so-called "standard" programming language in use today will probably be either obsolete, or pretty damned close to it.

So the important thing to do is:

REPEAT...

• Pick any damned language.


• Learn it.

...UNTIL dead OR retired.

Learn programming. You can do that in any programming language. As you learn more of those, new ones will become easier to pick up. Don't try to predict what the IT industry will look like by the time you've earned your degree. Nobody's that good at predicting the future.

Quote:
3. What types of jobs are there? I know there are artists, programmers, designers, and more. I want to know which would be the funnest or which gets more hands on approach.

This is a question we cannot answer for you. What do you enjoy doing? Are you an engineering type? Do you enjoy problem-solving? In that case, you'll probably quite like programming. Or project management, which is essentially the art of programming people.

Do you love gazing at wildflowers and studying the way the light reflects off them? Do you make flick-book animations in your exercise books? If so, art is probably more your thing.

There's a lot of overlap between the disciplines, so it's worthwhile diving right in and trying out each one. You've a lot of learning ahead of you, so don't worry if you find something else proves more interesting than programming later on.

You're also unlikely to have much success as a game designer unless you understand how games work, so studying the basics is a good thing in any case. And, of course, building that demo reel will help with this career too; you can always rope in a programmer and / or artist friend to help out.

Quote:
4. Lastly, do I have to go to a special gaming school or can I attend a good college and get my bachelor's in computer science and then get some experience out of college?

The second option seems the most popular with the companies I've worked for of late, but it really depends on your career path. If you're hell-bent on being a programmer first and foremost, be the best programmer you can be. A university course in the subject will generally be much broader than a games-specific course, which won't be teaching you stuff that programmers in other fields are using. Cross-pollination of ideas is a good thing.

That said, employers will be far more impressed by a great portfolio of your work than by any number of letters after your name.

Quote:
If anyone can help me out that would be great. I am thinking of doing Networking / Software Development or Game Design when I am out of college. I really like games and think I would enjoy designing them.

"Liking games" isn't the same thing as "designing games". Anyone can watch a movie, but most would suck at directing one.

Quote:I am not very good at drawing,

—which probably rules out graphics work, but it's also an issue if you want to be a game designer in some genres. Practice can help though.

Quote:but I am good with computers and I am good at making up stories and coming up with background stories for characters. (Which is another job isn't it? Game Writers? But, I think I would have to major in English for that).

If you want to be a writer, you need to write. If you want to be a game writer, you also need to understand how games work and what games are. However, writing for games is not the same thing as writing a story. A game is a tool which lets its users tell stories within the game's confines. The Writer and The Author are no longer the same, but separate individuals, often with different ideas about where the story should go next. This is hard, and there are, as yet, no courses I'm aware of which teach the craft. So an English degree is probably as good as any, though you could always take English as a minor and go for a Comp. Sci. (or related) degree instead.

Frankly, your post reads like someone trying to decide what career he's going to have before he's even checked out all the options. You have plenty of time to decide this for yourself, but the only way you'll know if you're doing the right thing is to try the options out!

Don't be afraid of discovering you suck at something. I'm a lousy swimmer and can't speak Swahili. But that doesn't matter, because neither is relevant to what I do, which is write.

But there is one thing you should strive for: find something you love doing. Once you know what that is, you'll know where your future lies.

Hello Amp, you wrote:

1a. Is game development a realistic path to go for as a career?
1b. how realistic is it to get a job after college?
3a. What types of jobs are there?
3b. I want to know which would be the funnest or which gets more hands on approach.
4. Lastly, do I have to go to a special gaming school or can I attend a good college and get my bachelor's in computer science and then get some experience out of college?
5. I am not very good at drawing, but I am good with computers and I am good at making up stories and coming up with background stories for characters. (Which is another job isn't it? Game Writers? But, I think I would have to major in English for that).

Answers:

1a. It's realistic.
1b. That depends on you. It'll probably take some time while you level-up.
3a. View Forum FAQ (above).
3b. That's up to YOU to decide. Read FAQ 40.
4. View Forum FAQ (above).
5. Yes. View Forum FAQ.