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Ask HN: Do CS degrees avoid game design so CS majors don't lose interest in CS?
Maybe teaching game design would lead too many CS majors to switch to a more creative major?
- arduinomancer 2y agoWhat makes you think they avoid it? When I was in uni CS majors could take multiple gamedev classes but they were electives
- Jtsummers 2y ago> What makes you think they avoid it? amichail's questions rarely make sense when you read them. They contain weird assumptions that don't make sense when considered against reality or they're just weird questions. I assume they're stoned half the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416374
- superconduct123 2y agoThat sounds like a premise for a comedy sketch
- dave4420 2y agoIf CS courses are supposed to teach students how to do Software Engineering, maybe they should be renamed to be SE courses.
- Ekaros 2y agoWhy should CS teach game design? It is really orthogonal to computer science. And in some parts even to software engineering. CS can be useful for game design, but I doubt there is too much to gain other way around.
- amichail 2y agoSo why is HCI part of CS?
- Ekaros 2y agoTo offer well rounded education. And HCI is really in sense core of lot more software than game design. You have to stop somewhere and can only include so much.
- superconduct123 2y agoIts not At my uni HCI was an optional elective
- markus_zhang 2y agoGame design has nothing to do with CS. But students can learn it on their own. BTW my No.1 pet peeve about universities is they force you to take many irrelevant courses which you can simply look up by yourselves if you so wish.
- leros 2y agoComputer Science is about computing theory, algorithms and such, not practical software engineering. You can actually learn computer science without programming. Game Design should probably be an art school discipline.
- amichail 2y agoComputer science without programming is like making pizza but never eating it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- scarface_74 2y agoGoing to college is about being able to convince some entity with money to give you some of that money in exchange for your labor so then you can exchange that money to support your addiction to food, clothes and shelter. It is perfectly reasonable to spend four years of life and tens of thousands of dollar and expect to learn something you can use to get a job.
- leros 2y agoI don't pragmatically disagree with you, but this is a debatable point. Technically going to college is to learn knowledge about a topic. For computer science, that would be learning the theory of computing. What you're talking about is a trade school to become a software engineer. There are people who want to get a PhD in computer science or go on to do research of some kind. Those people do need a theory based computer science curriculum, not just a software engineering trade school. We currently conflate these two things. It mostly works out but we should really be more explicit about it in my opinion. I went to a top CS program and I learned 90% of what I needed to know to be a software engineer at my first job, not in school. Something about that feels off to me.
- scarface_74 2y ago
- kasey_junk 2y agoGame design and programming is a common elective at many cs programs. I had it as an option years ago and years ago.
- watwut 2y agoNo, but it would simply be off-putting to majority of the students and they dont need it for anything. There are game focused programs available for those who want to go into game development. They are not mandatory in general CS.
- Jtsummers 2y agoGame design is taught at many schools, though often not a lot of courses (maybe 1 or 2). But if you broaden your scope, the things that go into video games (graphics, modeling like goes into a physics engine, etc.) are taught at many more schools with greater opportunity to dive deeper into the topics.
- JamesLeonis 2y agoI went through school specializing in game development. Here are some thoughts: Game development is all about project management, including managing external teams. The CS is just one part that goes into the whole business. You instead will be working with artists and their tools, from exporting 3D models to playing sound correctly. Getting everybody working productively is Project Management 101. As a corollary, having students make a very simple game (like Frogger or Space Invaders) with multiple people, including non-technical people, is great practice for real-world development while not exploding in scope. "Game Design" is notoriously vague, but college is a unique place where you can get all the building blocks. You really want to have some experience with music, art, philosophy, theater, creative writing, project/business management, and much more. The broader your experience the more it serves your foundation. College is also a great place to meet many different people (artists, business, theater, music, etc) that can contribute and bounce ideas. You will learn about managing people! Game development is more Art than Computer Science. Yes it is a simulation that is programmed on a computer, but outside low level game engine development you will be working on much more fuzzy concepts like artwork and "fun" far more than the CS heavy parts. Because it takes so many different experiences combined together, it's hard to make a specific elective or specific major. I do think other majors, like Film and Theater, are a good prototype of what a Game Development major might look like because they too have to combine many different technical specialties into a production. tl;dr: Game development isn't a single major, but a whole bunch of majors in a trench coat.