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Working in Game Development
A friend of mine is trying to decide what he is going to study at university( as we all are) He is very interested in persuing a career in gaming, but has no idea what to study. A university he likes offers A.I as a degree, but he doesn't know if it is worth spending 4 years on. Since there are very talented and experienced deveopers here, I thought I'd see what you guys think is good. just to give him some more ideas.
Thanks,
Thanks,
Comments
I'd recommend studying a related field that gives you the neccesary skills. Frankly, 90% of the code monkeys I know come from engineering rather than com-sci. The AI program sounds good if that's what he likes, and lord knows it's become an integral part of game development -I'll let Mr. Walker speak to that though.
To summarize, get a well rounded education in an area of study you enjoy, and hopefully will get you the skills needed to get a job in the industry while still giving you options beyond one specific field.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]I agree with Marc 100%. The only thing I'd add is to underscore the "well rounded education". I think that interactive entertainment needs people who can take a multi-disciplinary approach[/b][/quote]
Ayup. I'd add to your advice by saying that ANYONE, regardless of in which career they want to work (with a few exceptions, obviously), should go for a well-rounded education. Specialization was the way of the late 80s and early 90s, but I'm suffering for that fact in my job search attempts.
[b]I chose the engineering route myself. CompSci offered programming skills, but it didn't seem to offer much in the way of problem solving skills.[/b][/quote]
That depends very much on the college. I attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA (as did Rick). WPI, while also providing you with the basics and background skills, also seems to concentrate on problem solving in the team and individual project scenes. RPI seemed to have a similar program, too. Both are exceptional engineering schools, but you'll pay a premium in terms of tuition for those perks. I have teaching staff contacts at NWU and UIUC too, if you have an interest in those institutions.
[quote][b]Engineering is based on problem solving. This way I get a good education in professional programming as well as education in problem solving and some hardware amd system design on top of all that. Not to mention I get to do other stuff I'm interested in like circuit design, a bit of mechanics, all the engineering stuff.[/b][/quote]
You'd like WPI, then. They have their own clean room and computer engineering/EE students usually take one class in which they actually have a design of theirs etched onto a wafer and do work both in chip design and clean room work.
One thing, though. I'll only comment on WPI, since I spend my undergrad and grad years there. It's tough. _Very_ tough. I was in the mechanical/aerospace engineering program, so will comment on that. There are a few weed-out courses in the ME program that tend to weed out the students who aren't up to WPI standards above and beyond the admissions office's acceptance standards.
The Statics, Dynamics and Heat Transfer classes tend to take a toll on freshman/sophomore students. I remember the Heat Transfer class in which I enrolled started out at 100 to 130 students. Of those 100-130 students, 27 passed the class. FYI, "passing" at WPI is an A, B or C. Anything below a C is an "NR" which stands for "No Record," aka it isn't on your official transcript, but you also don't get credit for the course. NRs are tracked for financial aid purposes, however.
[b]wpi is an excellent school, one of my uncles went there. now he's in his late 40's and an exec vp at mobile. and im not [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/frown.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
but you are not in your late 40s either. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/vsml.gif[/img]
[b]wpi is an excellent school, one of my uncles went there. now he's in his late 40's and an exec vp at mobile. and im not [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/frown.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
For a guide on pricing, my first semester at WPI was the fall 1987 semester, and the tuition at that point was just about $14.5K. When I finished my Master of Science degree in the Spring 1994 semester, the yearly tuition was just about $25.5K.
Ayup. It is a good school, just expensive and tough.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
I've been interviewing young programmers for positions where I work, and someone who's developped games in his basement, however small they are, scored alot more points in my book than anyone who's got the highest grade in some programming class but doesn't do anything on his own.
Alot of people wanna get into the gaming industry because "it's cool", or it pays well. When I run interviews and look at resumes I'm looking for a sort of "drive", something that pushes the candidate to code game, a passion if you will. I barely look at grades.
You'd be surprised how many university graduates wanted a position as game programmer and didn't even know what DirectX is...
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"Everything's gone to hell John, God help us all"
[b]Thanks guys I'll convey your advice to him. It really suprises me though that specialization in a feild has become a disadvantage considering how much they press it in schools. [/b][/quote]
Since when have schools been up to date on the needs of the industry?
By nature, schools follow a feedback loop of asking industry what it needs, and trying to teach it, and then asking again next cycle. This loop has a built in propagation (IE length of the course), which can be compounded by the lack of extra time for the instructor to catch up to changes in this environment, because they are busy trying to teach what they've been asked to.
Then there's the "Financial Aid" scams that some schools gravitate toward, and the "professional Students" who make use of it from generation to generation.
I mean... Why work at all, if you can live by calling yourself a student.
Pathetic in my opinion...
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]Thanks guys I'll convey your advice to him. It really suprises me though that specialization in a feild has become a disadvantage considering how much they press it in schools. [/b][/quote]
Here's the thing...when you specialize, you pigeon-hole yourself into a very specific career/job. Jobs have been known to fall by the wayside or end up hitting hard times. As an example, most of the work I did was to aim for a specialty in aerospace engineering and, more specifically, military-type weapon and airframe design, since I did a lot of coursework in hypersonic flow, computational methods/modelling, astronautics, system analysis, programming, turbulent flow, aerodynamics and stress analysis.
I graduated with my bachelor of science degree just as the military contract market hit rock bottom during the Bush (the first Bush) administration (1987). There isn't much call for hypersonic flow study in the commercial airline market [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
Of course, if you are too generalized/well-rounded, you end up being a jack of all trades, but master of none. Yes, that cliche is true. Very true.
The trick is finding a happy medium.
[b]JohnD: Sounds pretty much like my course. All designed to be extremely tough (a lot of people drop out, [b]especially[/b] in the computer systems course which is the hardest of all. Lots of individual and group orientated projects, etc etc.[/B][/quote]
Ayup - WPI is pretty much all like that. During your sophomore year, you complete your Sufficiency, a quarter-long project in which you basically write a mini-thesis on an original subject involving the Humanities. During your junior year, you undergo a year-long IQP, in which you work on an original team project integrating technology with humanity. During your senior year, you undergo a year-long MQP, which is an original project in your major. You end up giving presentations for and defending all three of those major projects.
As a guide, my Sufficiency investigated economic perestroika in the then-Soviet Union. Understand this was in 1988. My IQP involved using Hypercard on the Mac to write adult literacy software in cooperation with the Worcester Adult Learning Center. FYI, Rick was one of my two partners in the IQP. My MQP involved the design and optimization of a multi-element airfoil. This involved machining an aluminum airfoil/leading-edge slat combo from a block of aluminum in WPI's machine shops, then optimizing the design through wind tunnel testing.
[quote][b]Althouh mine doesn't have a clean room (not enough money in the budget [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]). We have to use FPGA chips.[/b][/quote]
Ayup. WPI has a clean room with odd yellow-tinted windows opening into some prep rooms in (I think) Atwater-Kent Hall and I remember seeing people in clean suits in that room, doing some sort of work.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras