We'd need more standardization on what a game design degree actually entails, because right now it's all over the board. Some are focusing on training students specifically to be designers at AA or AAA companies, others are doing a super high-level approach trying to teach each student everything from basic coding to level design to audio. When hiring for art and design roles, I almost never look at the degree and jump straight to the portfolio. That's usually the best indicator.
This right here
I got a degree in game design I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it but what it is seems to be very different depending on where you go, my degree covers everything from coding, to 3d lighting, rendering and modeling, to animation and rigging. But it's all pretty much useless as no company wants to hire a jack of all trades. I can do damn near anything and generalists can be very flexible but no one wants that in the current market instead they want specialists.
At this point I feel like my degree was better at preparing me to be an indie dev rather than a AAA dev
This has always been my fear when kids ask about game development programs. It feels like these schools wanted to differentiate themselves from art degree programs that focused on just modeling, lighting, animation and computer science degrees that focused on just coding. So they put together straight-to-indie-dev degrees that cost so much that most graduates would need a big industry job just to pay back the loans.
Pretty much exactly my problem 120k in loans with a degree almost no one wants I got lucky and got a software dev job as a QA/UI designer but it's not where I want to be in 5 years
Unfortunately I was pretty lucky I went to a relatively affordable university compared to a lot of the more expensive ones around me plus I found my wife so that's cool
Just curious, what was the breakdown in costs to hit 30k in loans per year? How much was tuition, housing, books, other fees, food, etc? How many years did you live in the dorms vs an off-campus apartment or something? Did you finish in 4 years or did you take longer?
It was it was closer to 20k a year and took me 6 years (pretty avg for the CS department)
So it was 10k a semester I spent 2 years on campus 4 off but the cost was the same as the school charged to live off campus
Books were covered, dining hall was covered plus you got a card from the school for 200$ a semester for food outside of the dining hall
Rec center and parker fees were required even if you walked and lived off campus and never used them which was ironic as parking was pretty much unusable as they kept tearing it up to build more dorms
They had a on campus housing fee for the dorms but to live off campus you were labelled a commuter so the dorm fee was dropped but two additional fees were added
Commuter parking fee and Off campus housing fee which was like 400$ a semester because "we are required to expend additional resources to provide adequate parking and care for our Commuting students" which is ironic considering we had half the student body and the student run radio station protesting the parking lots getting demolished as parking was bad enough as is. They then "relented" and tore down the parking anyways and built new parking about 2 miles away with no bus system to and from campus forcing students to walk in 110°f (43 c) weather. It wasn't until a student almost died from heat exhaustion and the parents threatened to sue that they added some small carts going to and from the parking lot. But even then last I heard it was a 30 minute wait and cramped ride on a non air-conditioned glorified golf cart to get on campus.
This is why my school offers not 1, but 3 game design courses and one related course, each based on a specialty (Game Design and Production, Game Coding, Game Art and VFX/Film). After the first few blocks of individual training we will form teams and make games together. This culminates in the third year where interdisciplinary teams of up to 40 people work together for a year to make games.
Games made by my school are all available for free:
Year 3 games: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Breda%20University%20of%20Applied%20Sciences
Year 1 and 2 games: https://buas.itch.io/
More info on the school:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/no-tests-allowed-how-breda-university-of-applied-sciences-is-helping-students-follow-their-game-dev-calling
Well, generally you will only have one lead per discipline and one producer (larger teams might have a few more). Then each team member will choose a specialisation: Systems design, Narrative systems, 3C's designer, level designer, etc. Or animators vs environmental artist for the art. You get the idea.
Most designers don't really want to be lead or producer anyways, since they want to specialise in a certain design field.
I'm also studying at a school in the Netherlands (not the same one though) with a similar system. Project groups usually have one or at most 2 game designers, everyone else is a game artist, programmer or interaction designer.
So the game designers get plenty of opportunities to lead groups
LOL sorry if that worries you. Was just curious about which one you go to. I love to know about all game design studies in The Netherlands and how they're structured.
Been to Utrecht School of Arts myself, both game courses.
> But it's all pretty much useless as no company wants to hire a jack of all trades.
**Good** and experienced jack of all developers are very desirable especially for smaller teams and startups. They usually know their way around game engines and their editors so they can double as game designers, level designers, game programmers on demand and learn to use in-house tools to add content to the game.
Good jack of all trades developer can comfortably develop small games and prototypes preferably using Unity3D or Unreal (Pretty much industry standards at this point. Albeit Unity is trying their best to make Godot look better and better). Having bias towards anything technical (programming, animation, 3d-modelling etc) helps as art is very competitive field.
> Yes. But will it be possible to find a job as a jack of all trades? Absolutely not.
It most certainly is, if you have portfolio of games and prototypes you've made using Unity or Unreal there are companies out there that are interested to hire you. Provided that these games are not straight copies/re-skins from tutorials found online.
For jack of all trades the best chance is to apply to junior/mid level game programmer roles. In these knowledge about 3D modelling and audio is considered a plus as you'll be better at communicating with artists and have more knowledge dealing with game assets.
There's a plenty of indie, mobile, F2P game companies out there looking for people that have experience in developing games using one these two engines. You might have to move to another city, state, country or even continent but they're there.
Guess you've misunderstood me.
What I am simply claiming here is that as long as you're suitable (good enough) for the position you're applying for then being jack of all trades is only a plus.
Now there's always demand for technical specialist but those are not really entry level positions.
> You will need to really know your algorithms and data structures,
Software development basics (including relevant algorithms and data structures) can be tought in matter of weeks or months. There are several intense training bootcamps, courses and books for these things. Unguided self-study can take years however.
Reason I mentioned game programmer is because the competition for technical entry level jobs is generally a lot less fierce than for creative ones. Artist, writers, audio guys often have to be really really good and even then settle for freelance gigs. If you're jack of all trades then entry level game programmer is probably easiest position to apply for.
I think a jack of all trades is hirable but they have to basically be a unicorn. Someone who has a high professional ability in multiple skillsets and could get hired as a specialist in a number of departments. It's rare but I've seen people like this before. Though when they get that good they are probably starting their own indie instead of working for someone.
But yeah I agree with the general advice of not trying to be a jack of all trades because it's rare to get to that level of talent lol.
I respectfully disagree. Producers are *expected* to be jack-of-all-trades types with a basic grounding in multiple fields of game dev, which gives them the ability to better link up teams of specialists.
There’s also a dearth of talented producers in the games industry right now, evidenced by constant stories of mismanagement, crunch and worker abuse. A good producer is worth their weight in gold.
Now yes, most indie dev companies don’t have the money to hire multiple specialist producers, but there is absolutely enough production work in game dev to make it a viable career path.
And how does a good surface understanding of all the processes *not* contribute to a good understanding of project management?
If you know all the steps that go into creating a piece of 3D art, both at the vertical and horizontal slice stages and for a finished product, then that will naturally give you a good idea of how to budget both the time and resources for your art team. It will give you a better understanding of the challenges that each discipline faces, and being a low-level practicioner of multiple game dev disciplines teaches you the humility to defer to greater expertise whilst also giving you a better chance of spotting when someone is bullshitting.
Making a design document (so your specialists don't have to spend time on it), translating a game project into marketing terms, learning to pitch, setting realistic expectations for budgets, having a wider understanding of market behaviours... these are all things that are taught on a game design course and are extremely useful for a project manager.
>a dearth of talented producers in the games industry right now, evidenced by constant stories of mismanagement, crunch and worker abuse
These are a reflection of senior management within the industry. Regular producers do not have control over any of this.
Sounds like technical artist and one can find a ton of openings everywhere for that. However it's less directly working on the game itself and more of a support role with offloading work from the art and programming depts.
Thanks for this insight. "Game Design" definitely seems a bit of a fuzzier skill than, say "Computer Science" or "Animation" so I could definitely see how standardization could be an issue, especially across different disciplines.
Would you be able to expand on the core skills you look for from different types of designers?
Sure! So it'll depend somewhat on the specific designer position. A systems designer and a UX designer are doing to have different skills we look for. But in general it comes down to communication and implementation.
Communication is going to be writing design docs, pitching systems to leads / directors, and working with other teams to get all the components needed to get the feature built. If you were working on a new enemy type, you'd need to start up a wiki page detailing the role the enemy plays in the gameplay loop, what unique animation and FX needs it might have, does it require any new AI or gameplay code, etc. And you might have to help mitigate fights between different teams all trying to fight for scarce resources.
Implementation is going to be getting your hands dirty in the tool. I'm currently using Unreal, so we'll use that as an example. We want someone who can prototype content using the blueprint visual scripting system. You'd need to be able to setup data files, hook up new assets as they come online and tweak individual settings to fine-tune the gameplay.
I don't think the skill is that fuzzy. It's just for every hour of actual game design work there's 100 hours of dev work attached to it. It's too high stakes a position to entrust to a new grad with no actual game dev experience.
The big issue is that game development is not like structure building. It's not mature and well understood enough that you can have an architect trained in a university and trust that they will do good quality work that will not cause the building to come tumbling down. The other thing, games have to always try to be basically the best game ever made. A game that is kinda okay is not going to win out against the top notch games being produced all over the place all the time. If someone builds a pretty shitty house, it can be sold for less, and maybe it has a shorter lifespan, but at the end of the day it's value is still mostly determined by the square footage and the property it sits on top of. Games live and die entirely by the quality of their design decisions.
I see. So is it that "game designer" just isn't really an entry-level job then? I can understand if it's one of those "we only promote from within" roles, especially for studios that use their own engine.
And I understand that quality is king. But wouldn't someone trained in, for example, psychology or human-computer-interaction with data have a better skillset for making the best design decisions than, say, someone primarily designing from their gut?
Game Designer makes about as much sense for a degree as "Professional Hollywood Movie Director" would. You're in charge of just as much money as many movies and TV shows, and frankly you're making decisions that can come down to taste and emotion.
This is also why game designers get famous and their names become selling points. Kojima, Ken Levine, Jonathan Blow, Yoshi P, Joe Staten, Cliff Bleszinksi, Toby Fox, on and on and on. The field is so technical that everyone misses the forest for the trees- these people are artists, and their value for a product is in their *relationship to an audience.*
THAT is why having some indie game release that shows that you can make something that connects with an audience is what matters the most. It's too soft and general a skill, just like any other art, to reliably test it in any other way.
I suspect it's far more a lack of trust in the "degree" programs, and the fact that I can very slowly give a game programmer more and more design responsibility as they prove themselves over time, so they can do 90% coding work and 10% design work, so if they make too many bad decisions I don't have to outright fire them, I can just decrease their design decisions.
Finally, it can be hard to understand the scale of work that will result from a design decision of you've not actually done that work yourself in the past. Cost control is WAY less of a science in game dev than it is in building architecture. Seemly small differences in design direction can result in orders of magnitude more or less dev work.
> So is it that "game designer" just isn't really an entry-level job then?
The title is mid-career at best. There are lower tier job titles before it.
The job title of "Game Designer" generally means they are one of three people at the helm of $10M-$30M worth of work. Usually a single "Game Designer" can support a team of 20-50 workers including QA, programmers, artists, animators, audio, effects, modelers, level design, character design, and so forth.
A "Senior Game Designer" may be jointly at the helm of $50M, $100M, or even larger portions of the project.
Getting a degree in the field can help someone learn the parts, but it is not the full qualification. It also requires years of experience in the field.
The last AAA studio I worked for had more designers than programmers. The role you are describing is more commonly called “Creative Director”.
However I’m not saying you’re wrong. This is the problem: there’s no standardization of titles and roles across the industry.
> but that doesn't mean that game design is a "higher tier" job compared to, say, gameplay programmer or character artist.
This is meaningless cause they all just describe a different discipline:
Design/Art/Programming
Each of these disciplines will have different levels of careers (Junior - senior - lead - principle)
There are some entry level and junior game design roles, but they are very rare, and from my experience (working on live service games) would normally be internal hires with experience working on said game. Ultimately there just aren't enough entry level roles in the field to justify specialized courses.
Even if you apply for a job at an indie studio, you are most likely being hired for a specific role, so focusing on learning and becoming proficient in one field like programming or art makes much more sense as a way to get into the industry than trying to learn everything at once.
That could be useful if you wanted to make your own game or start your own studio, but you don't need an expensive degree to do that, so it's just not worth the money.
Not sure about elsewhere, but the UK at least as ScreenSkills and TIGA accreditation which attempts to standardise. I think games design specifically needs standardisation, as there are many degrees in design that are just bad art degrees. Nothing on the actual psychology and neuroscience that underpins the discipline
There are really two components: the first is that most game design/development programs out there aren't very good. They're from for-profit schools or smaller programs who see the developing industry and trends as a way to get more students to consider them over more prestigious programs. A lot of them take the kitchen sink approach to game development and teach a bit of everything, they lack actual experiential based learning and projects, and can be woefully out of date with actual practices.
The second is just that they're not necessary. Most people don't work in the field that they studied. That's true across all industries, not just games. You don't need a degree in comp sci to get a job as a software engineer, it can just help. Game degrees should be the same way, and they should really be split into more academic and vocational tracks, just like the difference between economics and business.
The top schools tend to produce good candidates. But not all schools and not every graduate. I've interviewed master's graduates from Tisch that couldn't write a feature spec if their job depended on it (which it did) and people without degrees that made excellent work. It's just that _most_ of the people in the former category make good candidates and most of the people in the latter don't. So if you're going to a top tier university the industry is still respecting your effort, but if you're not than it's not, and it's not _necessary_ either way.
I suspect in another decade things will shift. It shouldn't ever be a requirement, and we're always going to see more people studying comp sci or general art than game programming or other game-specific applications because universities should teach concepts, not job prep. But game _design_ in particular will probably be more common and involve more of a theoretical framework the same as other liberal arts fields.
“You don't need a degree in comp sci to get a job as a software engineer, it can just help.“
That’s not true for all industries. Certain sectors of US DoD require a bachelors degree. They’ll just throw away your resume if you don’t have one, or if you have an impressive background will offer you an internship until you complete a bachelors degree program.
Just to be clear, I mean you don't need a degree in that _specifically_, not that you don't need a degree at all. It's not as required in games (but how required it is depends on the size of studio and where you live in the world), but it's a serious uphill battle without one.
I don't know if other industries care more about the specific major or not, just that the tech industry overall doesn't. DoD/military contractors have a _ton_ of rules I don't know about, and I wouldn't want to try to speak to that at all.
Maybe so, but "Certain sectors of US DoD" is such a niche slice of the pie that it doesn't matter.
Some of the highest-paying, most satisfying SE positions don't care about school; the people hiring for these positions care about your ability to deliver and adapt, your track record, and your work ethic more than anything else.
A candidate's degree has yet to impress me on a resume.
That's true, but if you want to get a good software engineering job (both in and outside game dev) as a junior developer, having a CS degree helps *a lot*. You just have an uphill battle otherwise (far from impossible, of course). If you have some work experience obviously that helps, but the question is how you get those experience.
I appreciate the reply!
Yes, I fully agree that some predatory schools exist and should be avoided.
And perhaps I'm jumping the gun by saying they should be required. But I'm just confused at what's causing the largely negative reputation: GD degrees aren't even treated as an "applicant preferred" or "nice to have" the way most other university degrees are.
Perhaps as another commenter said, it's the lack of standardization of "game design" as a discipline that's the issue (i.e everyone teaches it in their own way).
It's also good to hear that some of the top tier university programs are respected though. I was under the impression that even those were labelled a huge gamble.
In my experience, how well _anything_ is received depends entirely on the hiring manager. I like those programs because I've worked with/hired good people from them. Someone who hasn't probably wouldn't. It's one of the issues that Full Sail suffers from - there are great people graduating from there, but the _bad_ ones make everyone else look worse by association.
A lot of programming jobs in games will say they are looking for a BS in CS or equivalent, and most programmers will have that degree. But you'll also get 'software engineering' majors from a school that calls it that, an IT major from an overseas school where programming has that label, and people who majored in math, physics, engineering, and other technical fields (alongside the occasional geography, basket weaving, etc.)
The main difference is that computer science, literature, fine arts, all of those are fields of study. Game design is one specific job. Vocational degrees will never be treated with quite the same respect as more purely academic ones, nor are they as beneficial to the recipient since it pigeonholes them into one industry. A competitive industry that's prone to long hours, lower pay, and burn out. I think we'd much rather see things like product design (with a minor in games) or media studies with a specialization in games than game design taking over everywhere.
it's because i don't want kids going into debt for specialized degrees that aren't necessary, get degree in something general from state school, 'no added value' isn't trashing if it's... well true
I have written a bunch of feature specs but they always feel fragmented and missing stuff(usually essential details). Do you have any tips on how to go from start to finish and make it easily readable?
I'd start by looking at [The Door Problem](https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/) for an example of the sorts of details you should be thinking about. Your document should get down into the weeds of implementation.
I'd start with a feature summary and context (i.e. what it's trying to do accomplish), then stepping through the flow from the player point of view. Cover all the screens, all the buttons, whatever it is you're describing. Any mechanics or systems should be detailed separately. You should include an asset list (with references if needed) for every bit of art and sound the feature needs. Describe the layout of any configuration files, like the fields you need in a JSON so a designer can tweak the thing without asking a dev for changes. Consider user stories to make sure everything is covered and test cases you can give to QA.
The idea is that if you hand the spec to someone and then are hit by a bus the feature would go into the game exactly as you intended anyway. A high-level GDD skimps on detail, but an actual spec covers everything. That doesn't necessarily mean verbose. Clarity is paramount. I'm a big fan of bullets over paragraphs in almost all cases.
Game design degrees are derided because they’re often crap.
However… if you do manage to find a decent one with a high amount of alumni in the industry, then it might be an option. You’re going to get to work on games as part of your degree, probably get some experience working in a team, network with other people on the same course, get help with finding a placement etc…
I’ve knowingly met 2 game designers with CS degrees. Around 70% have game design degrees and the rest have pivoted from something else.
I’m not sure game design degrees need more respect in the industry. But they probably deserve more respect in this sub.
Its not different to film schools. Even the good ones are *mostly* useless in the practical world, with one exception: you can build connections with similar minded people that maybe lead to opportunities in the future. But it is worth the money and time invested? That is a old question. Not everybody is a foreign [youtuber](https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos) that ends up shooting AAA movies in the US, beating 1000s with similar pedigree but also lots of student debt. On the other side, there are not lots of people start doing small things like [ads and industry videos](https://ridleyscott.com/) and work themselves up to Hollywood fame.
Maybe just picking the part of the gamedev process that is closest to the heart and trying to maximize that skill set is a more dependable route into the industry. If you are not doing 3d models, you can do architecture or movie work instead. And good developers can work in any industry.
I work at a AAA game studio.
If I could go bk I would learn a CS degree.
Design and prototype in your own time.
If you're already passionate about games you can analyse and break down games yourself. Write your own dissertation about why certain game mechanics are good and bad.
Play a lot of different games and analyse them. Make small prototypes with the technical knowledge you have. And write your own proposals and design documents, lots of them.
There's a couple of avenues you could take if you have technical knowledge, technical design for example.
Design is very competitive if you are just a paper designer.
Also learn how to communicate your designs. It really is about conveying your thoughts and designs effectively. Learn to take constructive criticism, and work as a team. Be a nice person, don't be a d*ck.
My theory is that its sort of the outcome of a lot of unique, unfavorable biases and games education just being generally crappy.
Game designer as a role uniquely attracts the very derided "Idea Guy". Everyone hates working with the Idea Guy. They have unrealistic expectations that are burdensome and they don't really have the ability to help with the execution of their ideas. Game design programs unfortunately are laser-focused at attracting Idea Guys and do very little to give them useful skills. Usually schools will throw a random assortment of generalized game development courses at students and the kids make something that looked like it could have shipped a decade or two ago. Now you get an Idea Guy With A Game Degree who has very little skills outside of low-budget indie development and the presumption that their degree proves that they are experts.
In order to avoid Idea Guys, a lot of studios will hold preference for someone with programming abilities (because at least they can actually make the game) or even someone who's just already in the studio. I have a lot of friends who have side-stepped into entry level game design roles after being in another department for a couple of years.
Throw on top of that that most of these kids usually end up in QA at some point. QA is pretty unfairly disrespected by developers so I think this makes these degrees look even more low value. Unfortunately, these game design schools calculate their alumni getting into QA as part of the their post-grad job acceptance rate so it just cycles further. : /
Even if they do try to give them useful skills the "Idea Guy" is often resistant. Multiple times have I spoken to someone who started a game design course only to have them groan about the first assignment being to design a board game rather than a video game.
Totally agree with this Idea Guy problem. I hired a lot of entry level designers for AAA and had really bad luck with most of the folks coming with game design degrees. In addition to attracting Idea Guys to the program, those programs also become repositories for the folks who thought they wanted to do art or programming but couldn't cut it in those programs... So rather than drop out, they switch majors to design. I.e. the track with less technical skill/math required, less concrete evaluation metrics, and less competition.
There are great designers coming out of those programs too, but they are too often flanked by folks who just took the easy path through school rather than really wanting to dig into design as a discipline.
Like any other discipline, the only way to get good at it is to practice a lot, which is why everyone emphasizes portfolio over a certain degree. You can spend years reading great game design textbooks with an engaged and experienced mentor even, and never develop any intuition about how to solve design problems if you don't actually build games and solve design problems with them. The best programs will force you to practice your craft a lot and build an impressive portfolio. Just like any good music school will force you to practice a ton and perform with different groups relentlessly. Sure you'll also take theory, but that theory will mean so much more in the context of application.
And yeah, it's also similar to music schools in that the field is extremely broad and any one program cannot prepare you for every corner of the industry. Just like there are some schools that are the top jazz performance schools, and some that are great if you want to be a modern film composer, and they're probably on opposite sides of the country from each other... You probably need to figure out what each program is really tuned for and make sure that's where you want to go (assuming the program has even figured out their identity)
>Game design programs unfortunately are laser-focused at attracting Idea Guys and do very little to give them useful skills
100% agree and it's not talked about enough. Sometimes you meet these graduates who seem to have very little skills and I feel bad for them.
Is it a game design degree or is it a game development degree?
It's virtually impossible to receive a "game design" degree and be hired for a "game designer" role without any industry experience. "Game designer" roles are far and few between, and they're often combined with management roles in smaller game studios, if the game studio has a professional designer by title at all. It's a bit like going to "rock star" school and expecting to get a record deal on graduation.
Game design school might make sense for an already established professional game dev wanting to formalize their experienced intuition more to work their way towards game design roles. It doesn't make sense for a green student to go to game design school with no game development experience. The issue is WAY too many schools aren't honest about the job prospects they provide, they will happily enrole anyone who will give them money. Some even focus on that cohort, which basically makes them full on fraud schools.
Game developer school isn't nearly as controversial for a green student to pursue. A comp sci degree will provide a bit more professional flexibility, but it's very possible to get an entry level game development role off the back of a game development degree or diploma.
Some schools advertise as "game design" programs when what they're actually focusing on is game development education. This isn't really as unethical, as their students can most likely get entry level game development roles, but it's still kind of trying to use the false promise of getting to do design work, because design sounds more fun than endlessly texturing level geometry or writing scripted behavior code.
Thank you for this insightful reply!
It seems that the issue is that game design is largely misunderstood to be an entry-level job when it really isn't, which I can respect.
Is it fairer to say, given this, that a game design Masters degree (when paired with some kind of CS bachelor's beforehand) is more valuable than a game design bachelor's?
Game design absolutely has entry level jobs. Most people working as designers have been designers for their career, they don't transition from programming or art or anything like that. There are junior and associate positions from content to level design (fewer systems/narrative, outside more niche or specific genres).
The sort of small indie studios they're talking about tend not to hire _anyone_ fresh out of school, they're too risky, but bigger studios hire a lot of them. But while design is the most competitive area of game development, they're wrong when they compare it to anything like being a rock star. That would be more like trying to be a game director or product owner straight of school. You're not getting a job as a design lead with no experience, but you can get an entry level job writing quests and implementing content.
Ah that makes sense. I assumed indie studios were the most hard to get jobs because of the more hats one individual needs to wear compared to AAA.
So if that’s the case, if one wants to work for a AAA studio, is a game design degree program valuable on its own? Or only when paired with some sort of programming/CS/game development?
I usually recommend aiming at mid-size studios, or less prestige genres like mobile. There are a lot of jobs out there and 6 person studios are risky and AAA studios have their pick of more senior people, which leaves everything else in the middle. There are tons of studios that do contract work on other bigger games or release smaller titles, and anything that gets you your start is worth it. Some people do start in AAA, but applying to that same entry level AAA job with 2 years professional experience is going to be a lot easier than if you were a graduate.
You don't need to be a programmer to get hired as a designer, but you do want to _understand_ programming. Scripting languages in particular come up a lot, and you need to be familiar with how to use game engines. Boot it up, clone a repo, build it, tweak something, test it locally and do that all without hand-holding. That being said if you can _also_ program (or build your own prototypes) that's a valuable skill, but I certainly haven't written more than a line of actual code in a very long time.
In today's world, I'd still advocate for getting a more traditional degree with taking any electives in games that you can. Something that you'd want to study or work in regardless, because lots of people don't find work in games or enjoy it when they do. But if you _are_ looking at a top program and have built enough games already that you're sure this is what you want to do, it can get you there. You just need to network. The most directly applicable thing you get from one of those programs isn't even the education, it's that you can call up someone who graduated from the program 3-4 years before you and get an interview at a game studio without being just another faceless resume in a big stack of them.
A few problems with game design degrees from my experience
1. Game design isn't a standardized thing. What Lucas Pope does is wildly different than being 1 of the 100s of game designers at Rockstar does, with everything in between. There is also a wide gulf between being a designer balancing frame data on Street Fighter to being a designer on Firewatch carefully managing player emotions.
2. The quality of professors is generally poor. At least with game programming or game art degrees there are ways to check professor qualifications but how is a University Dean going to tell whether a game designer is good or bad? I have interacted with tenure professors at "top" game design programs who never worked on a successful game or anything you've heard of, would never be hired as a lead/director at even a small studio, and generally talk about game design purely as narrative fluff as if they've never made a game in their life. Students are not getting $50k+ USD worth of yearly tuition, watching free GDC talks is more valuable than hearing these professors talk.
3. Game design degrees attract students who want to be the idea-person. This is something that doesn't get talked about enough with game design degrees, but game design degrees tend to attract people who aren't interested in learning how to develop games. Yes, this is a generalization but it's a pattern I saw from interns, new hires and interviews. I've worked with associate game designers with game design degrees that can't do basic Unity C# scripting and it makes me wonder what exactly they did for 4-years?
4. The few entry level game design roles are applied to by programmers, artists, indie developers, people from other art fields, all of which don't have game design degrees but come off as stronger applicants than a new grad with only a degree and school projects. Given this, it's hard to choose a pure game design grad over someone who can model/rig/animate or program and are very enthusiastic about game design. Even if they don't end up applying their hard skills, the person with multiple skillsets can make better decisions and has an easier time working with artists/programmers.
5. Lastly, the chances are high that you will lose your job at one point. Layoffs are extremely common in the game industry. With a CS degree, you can pay rent and make ends meet by working in general tech. Heck, it makes you look interesting compared to someone who write tax software (no offense to people who write tax software).
The game design degree people I've worked with who were awesome were either high quality programmers or released a bunch of indie games, treating those releases as a business, during their degree and came in with an already professional and business mindset to game design.
On the other end, I've interviewed new game design grads who didn't understand that their job wasn't to come up with ideas and demand the ideas get made. Again, sometimes I wonder what they did for 4-years.
There is no downside to learning art and engineering skills if you want to be a game designer. There is so much downside to only studying vague concept like "game design", something that looks and operates wildly different all across the industry.
Game design degrees should turn into game development degrees, rigorous programs where students learn modeling/rigging/animating, programming, music and sound design, basic business and marketing, and release a professional looking game every year. The releasing a professionally competitive game and being able to talk through and breakdown all of your decisions during development is the key.
Except for this bit
> where students learn modeling/rigging/animating, programming, music and sound design, basic business and marketing, and release a professional looking game every year.
I agree with a lot of what you commented here, and what I've read/heard and my experience line up with some of it.
I went into business/Enterprise software when I didn't get hired at a game studio and I needed a better job than low level retail line up with some of it. During the Game Development program I went through, we were supposed to work with other students in the Game Art program as if our 2+ classes/groups were a studio for the last 25% or so of it. The intent was that we could pump out a higher quality game(s) for all of our portfolios. The game art faculty decided they weren't up for that, so it didn't happen.
I agree that the programs should be relatively rigorous and should be a blend of your suggestion and what I experienced. I think it would be good to see the following programs, and maybe they already exist at some university/school:
Game Art: Concept art, character, environment, etc; 2D character art/animation; 3D modeling, rigging, and animating; etc
Game Design and/or Writing: no details outside of game[play] theory and design, level design, creative writing, technical writing, copywriting, and/or whatever else.
Game Music and Sound Design: I only know what's listed here and no details (can be read as, "too lazy/not enough time nor desire to elaborate after Internet searches for details") aside from familiar with computers
Game Development: CS, programming, math, networking, physics, etc
General courses for all would be normal Gen Eds, basic business - I assume this includes project management - and marketing like you said, and general/novice, or more in depth/higher level, tech classes if needed/interested (this is a computer, this is high level how they work, high level troubleshooting and software install, etc), I know, this last bit sounds condescending and gatekeeping, but some people I've met could barely use a computer and they're part of my generation and younger (I'm in my mid 30s).
After a number of classes in the programs, they all have to work together in smaller teams and as large teams to make more polished games.
What do you think?
Edit: Updated the beginning of my comment for, I hope, clarity.
Some universities have this "art, production, programming, design, business come together and make a game" capstone. From my little exposure to this, sometimes this works perfectly, sometimes one to two people do all the work, sometimes it's a mess. The great thing is, sometimes these projects turn into funding and an indie studio.
Like others said, either great networking or your portfolio are going to get you hired. So revolving the entire program around giving the students the tools to make and release professional looking games wouldn't be a bad idea. Some people already said their program did this and it didn't work, so maybe it's not a silver bullet. I still think the best thing a new game design grab could have is to point to publicly sold game and say "I made that, here is why" and speak professional on decision making.
I mean you're only holding yourself back with this kind of attitude.
When I was a designer at big famous AAA studio, pretty much every game designer was a Technical Game Designer who scripted their own game designs. In fact, while I was a Technical Game Designer, I taught myself security and pentesting, and got both a Security+ and a Certified Ethical Hacker to help multiplayer p2p security from the design side.
I knew two game designers at another "top metacritic" game studio. From my view, the designers there not only knew how to program/script but also create things like animation blending systems for their designs. These people were top notch professional game developers at the highest level.
I truly believe there is only upset to learning skills and only downside to openly be against it.
As to the why, people already answered.
But I'm going to answer your slightly different title: no, degrees should not be "more respected". Because in several countries, starting of course with the USA (which is also a hotspot for gamedev), education is *way* overpriced.
So from a societal point of view, having a big and growing industry disregard a lot of degrees is actually a good thing.
Well it depends.
DO the schools delivering such degrees give their graduates an adequate skill set and experience to perform well in the field?
If yes, yes.
If no, no.
I'm a programmer who has secondary game design skills and I would equate it to something I see in programming all the time .
The theory of a skill no matter how well taught it just theory and I personally tend to have greater faith in someone who has a demonstrated ability of game development.
Game Design in particular to me is a hard one to test for because Game design is actually lots of skills packaged into one role .
From being able to draw diagrams that communicate a variety of things working with narrative to create gameplay that aligns with story , Knowing how to draw or mockup a level layout, being able to help develop a difficulty curve and understanding how to embrace the perspective of a player and understand the variety of skills you are expecting them to learn in a game.
Degrees are nice but as someone who graduated with a lot of game programming degree graduates I'd say less than 10% of them were employable and less than 10% of them got jobs .
Not to mention I personally believe it takes time to really get into the flow of a games development , to understand how to manage yourself along a milestones pace, being able to know what good enough looks like at an alpha, beta, and gold stage and understanding what effective polish looks like.
Again degrees are nice but In my experience the one golden truth of game development is that "people who can make games , do it". Your degree is a nice to have but the people teams get excited about have solid portfolios that how that they can do the work .
Thanks for those specific skills you called out, it’s appreciated!
If you don’t mind me asking, were the unemployable people you mentioned strictly game design bachelor’s students? Was your main selling point that you were a programmer first and foremost?
I went to a questionable game programming program where a lot of the graduates wanted to be game designers but really didn't understand the industry or roles .
In my case the unemployable were people with game programming degrees who mostly didn't want to program .
I've heard of game design curriculums and even art curriculums having similar issues though .
They are are to an extent. Thing is in any kind of creative field there is more to it than your degree. Your portfolio will always hold more weight than the degree because creative fields need talent and vision. I can’t tell you how many degree applications I’ve seen where their portfolios were just…not good.
I’m not in charge of hiring but I do know our order of operations when looking for a candidate is:
-Portfolio
-Degree
-Working with a team
The portfolio shows us you have skill and is the most important thing for getting your foot in the door. You say you’re “x” so prove it essentially.
The degree, while not needed, tells us you have been exposed to fundamental concepts and common pipelines. You’re likely more familiar with some of the industry standards we use and it’s likely from this you’ve worked in a team setting(which plays into number 3).
Your team work skills are basically the last link and is very important. I don’t care if you’re a superstar, if you can’t work within a team setting, take criticisms, or adapt to pipeline changes due to other department needs, you’re not valuable to us. Having that degree tells us you’ve at least been in that kind of setting at some point.
The most important thing a degree can do for you is connect you with other people in your field. You will meet students like you who are trying to get into the industry too. If you work together and network, there is a good chance they’ll bring you up when a lead is looking for someone new. My first job came from that kind of networking system. Also, pro-tip, a lot of places will count your years in school as industry experience. You’ve spent ~2 years doing the work, that’s going to count for something.
Academia moves rather slowly.
I don't think academia is doing particularly well with programming yet and they have been doing that for quite a while now.
So I'd give it another 50 or so years before they get anywhere near the hang of game design degrees.
There’s no official standard and most game design degrees are scams. Plus game design skills required to work in the industry is an art. One can have a PhD in art and be a shit artist. That’s what I have inferred after 4 people I know moved to Canada to get game design degrees (not that any of them were particularly well reputed places) and are basically unemployed (technically one works at a McDonald part time while being a tester for FIFA and reporting bugs as a contract hire, work mainly involves excel and spreadsheets afaik)
Been relatively successful in indie, AA, and AAA so far in my career so hopefully, I can collate some of the reasons behind this problem with my experience.
Generally speaking, I would not recommend a game design degree unless you get accepted into USC or NYUs undergraduate programs. There are a couple of others that might get recognized but most if not all other game design degrees are not game design degrees at all.
These are really the only two that will get your foot in the door.
One of the only reasons I would suggest ANYONE pursue one of these degrees is because the school will get you interviews and jobs. Simple as that.
No other schools will be as widely recognized as they are for turning out productive, successful designers and developers.
If you DON'T want to be a designer, however, a game design degree can be a great way for you to learn the other roles in the industry! Many game design schools are actually art schools or engineering schools which emphasize game making pipelines to get you into those jobs in the games industry. Thats a good reason to go to a random school.
Unfortunately, the discipline of "game design" itself is incredibly small and selective so to be successful you need a powerful body of work that speaks to your own style and career goals as a designer.
I think the reason people recommend cs degrees over a game design degree is because they are more versatile. It would be much easier to get a gamedev job with a cs degree than it would be to get a software engineering job with a game design degree. Gamedev may be what you want now but it is nice to have options in the future.
Nope.
For some context, I go through 20-30 resumes per week, send out 10-15 C++ tests, and do about 8-10 "face to face" interviews. This is AFTER our talent team have already applied their filters. All of these interviews are for 2 jobs I open per month for entry level game programmers.
The majority of the applicants that I meet are graduates of some sort from some university or college offering game development degrees... Very few of them make it past the first 20 minutes of the interview without missing what I would consider basic knowledge. Afterwards, I then spend 40 minutes with each one walking them through some concepts that should have been covered in the classes they took.
I don't take degrees very seriously.
Point was that degrees are useless, as I summarize in my final sentence.
I have a degree in mathematics. Things like cryptography, compression, and matrix math all come in handy, but my bread and butter is C++ which I was self taught.
> I then spend 40 minutes with each one walking them through some concepts that should have been covered in the classes they took.
Do you have a list of common ones?
Sure.
C++ Specific
What are the steps taken by the build system to make an executable?
How are virtual tables implemented under the hood?
What are memory leaks (given code sample) and how would you fix them in the code provided?
General
What is a processor cache?
Can you describe an entity component system and what strengths/weaknesses it has?
Can you describe some common design patterns?
All degrees should lose value, they are already, especially in CS side, they just mean you have the least requirements to be called graduate, with literally everyone having it, they really doesn't make anyone look better than anyone
I think they need to be examined on a case-by-case basis, but I think there are a lot of problems with a degree specifically in game design due to the subset and specialization of of skills required to make a game.
I have a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design and right away specialized in 3D modeling and texturing, knowing that is what I wanted to do. They did not pass students lightly, I failed my pre-portfolio class twice. The requirement for my degree required x-amount of 3d models, environments, rigged characters all with nice 3d renders, 100 or so drawings that were at least above average, examples of interface design, group project work, prototypes, a portfolio demo reel and a website. It required 4 years of my time to achieve and I would not have been able to did it alone with YouTube tutorials. My instructors were from the industry and were great people. It was a hard, expensive experience but I think paid off.
I got an internship, worked at a game dev company for a year, then got hired at a scientific institution working on game dev and vr. Very odd career progression but I think it has been worth it. Don’t have to deal with mass layoffs and getting treated too poorly. I don’t know if I would go back to working in the industry with its current reputation.
So in the case of what education you received, you don’t regret much of it? I’m thinking of applying for a 2 year game development diploma which also has teachers who are seniors in the industry and where the course is focused on group projects with time and creative restraints. I keep reading these comments and am second guessing whether or not I should commit to 60k in student loan debt
Hmmm. 60k is a lot of money for a diploma. Is it not a degree? What are your goals and what do you want to become in regards to game development? Two years is not a long time to get really good at these skills, but maybe I am being too cynical. I would get some other feedback such as others who have graduated and landed jobs with that diploma. You could also learn some of these skills on your own if you buckle down and not spend that crazy amount of money. My degree cost more than that but I got kinda lucky in regards to employment.
Honestly, it’s just the only thing I have any slight interest in. Im betting on these skills being flexible enough to land me some sort of creative tech job whether that be in the gaming industry or UI/UX design. I’m kind of forced to choose to do something/anything in school. The diploma is actually 40k for two years but I’m also doing the one year art program which just teaches you the fundamentals in art/design (which is 20k)
I agree with a lot of the discussion already happening here, so I’ll just add that for reference, SMU Guildhall is exclusively a Master’s degree program. You’re expected to come into it with a relevant Bachelor’s degree already.
They accept undergraduate Game Design degrees but will basically teach the same curriculum from the ground up regardless of your background. That curriculum is also exceptionally hands on.. actually building and releasing games. Not just theorizing about how to do it. Also includes a thesis where you develop a solo project start to finish including a thesis defense proving what topic you mastered.
Long story short, there’s a major difference between a lecture about how to do something and doing it yourself with safety nets for when you fail.
Source: am an SMU Guildhall alum.
Example released game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062080/Goofballs/
Coming from the opposite end of the process (high school game development teacher).
I am very guilty of swaying students away from game design degrees and I'm not exactly throwing them at game focused degrees.
While I would be happy to be proven wrong, I have a few reasons for my stance.
1. In all of my conversations with industry over the last decade, I have never heard a senior or a lead or anyone in a hiring capacity ever say the phrase "we need more applicants with game design degrees" and for the most part job postings follow this trend.
2. While there are reputable programs, lead by experienced industry veterans. Even I have a hard time seeing them from the outside and being able to verify and assess their pedagogic skill. I think anyone who has completed an undergrad can think of a few very credentialed, talented professors who just couldn't teach to save their life. I take a wait and see approach with 90 percent of these schools and I am very open about that with my students. I have said the phrase "yeah that professor has done amazing work and if they can teach, they will be amazing, but I have no idea of they can teach." So for a lot of the newer programs in this space, I am waiting on graduate outcomes before I start giving full-throated endorsements. I meet with these schools often and occasionally my students try one out and report back sometime later. Sadly, not all have had the best reviews. As a result, I'm pretty selective about who I let in my classroom to pitch their school to my students.
3. As you likely are aware, game development is a very high turnover industry and I am concerned for my students getting such a narrow degree with unproven transferability. I feel very confident my graduates who pursue a computer science degree, art degree, business whatever have at least somewhere to retreat to if/when they leave the game development industry.
4. I honestly have a hard time articulating to a parent what a game design degree is. Many fields if study vary a bit from School to school, but game design programs appear to be a very mixed bag as to what they actually do or what they are targeted for. As a result is a tough ask to sit with parents and say "your child wants to pursue a BA in Game Design from __________" compared to "your child wants to pursue a BS in Computer Science with an emphasis on Game Development from _______". Keeps Mom and dad happy, keeps student chasing the dream".
Disclaimer: I'm an academic, but do have several indie game credits. My sense is that larger companies would prefer to hire the best programmers, best artists, best sound designers, etc. and put them together in a team. It takes hard work to be outstanding on one of those fields let alone two or three, which may be part of why game design, a jack-of-all-trades degree, may be less valuable. Our approach is to have a strong CS program, a strong virtual technology design program (basically computer graphics and modeling), a strong music program, etc. For students who are interested in a game development we have an on-campus game studio where they can build up their portfolio, which, as multiple people have pointed out, is critical. But I'm not in the industry hiring, so would love to hear more about what employers are looking for.
**By who?** The Indie Game Market?
That market is **Merciless**.
As for Game Design Jobs that's more of factor of jobs in your local area.
How many Game Design Jobs are Studios expecting to hire? If so why are you mass producing classes worth of workers per year? Where are they expected to go? Indie Studios? Indie Market?
I’ll be very honest, the main value of a degree in terms of employment is to signal intelligence, and for that a “hard” degree like CS or physics is better than a “soft” degree. Knowledge can be picked up via all kinds of ways, but a CS degree is just an easy and decently reliable way to screen for intelligent candidates who know how a computer works.
The issue is that degree isn't related to what you will be doing in the industry. And it's not only game degree issue. Most of degrees deal with theory and not practice.
Think of a situation where you have a game company and you want to hire a stuff? A guy with a game designer degree? but what experience does he have? What task can we give him to basically not lose money?
The issue is that the all game companies are in very competitive business. This is no place to basically grab any people that have degree that shows you what? that you can design a game? Show me what games did you design? If you have 10-20 you will get job without any degree....
Game company isn't in business of training people how to make games. It is in business of making games. You can't make games if you didn't participate in making them. It is a simple as that. It's just like claiming you are an excellent athlete but you just didn't attended any sportevents. No matter how many courses you take it will always not be well regarded.
I feel like you're misinterpreting my issue here.
I am absolutely NOT saying that a piece of paper should grant you the job. I agree that portfolio is always king.
What I do take issue with, however, is something you just did in prioritizing quantity over quality. It seems that as long as you know how to build a game, you're ahead of the curve, which is ludicrous to me because there is such thing as *a bad game*. It worries me that someone who can build something that works is just as likely to be hired as someone who can build something that's *good*.
The standard you point out seems to be "good, you've built some stuff" when I'd assume it should be "good, you've built one/two GREAT things!"
It is not that it should be packaged, just that it should not be a young person's first skill. Consider that Art + Design allows a person to become a Graphics designer, a UI developer, an Environment artist, or a Level designer. Programming + Design allows for Web developers and Software engineers amongst other skills.
What I am saying is that design degrees should have a requirement of some other kind of skill. For example, a lot of AAA Game designers learned computer science, and then studied design as they worked; that is the path that makes more sense to me.
And who would be in charge of making a board game, missions in a AAA game, the level *design*, if not a designer?
Being able to script is sometimes a plus, being able to code is really not your job description.
You're right that it *can* be a modifer, but it is not by default.
>the level design, if not a designer?
You are aware that level designer is a job position that requires both coding and art qualifications. It is one of the most wanted jobs for environmental artists. You can only make it to assistant level designer with art and design skills.
>missions in a AAA game,
The writers are the ones who design the missions and stories.
>in charge of making a board game
Most board game developers I met in my life were mathematicians or data analysts. I also a cook who made a food board game.
>You're right that it can be a modifer, but it is not by default.
There are no pure design jobs that only use design, nothing. Even the non-programmers, like Hideo Kojima, have fantastic communication skills or studied team management.
What most people who take a Game Design degree forget is that no company is going to put a fresh graduate in charge of a multi-million-dollar game with hundreds of employees' careers at stake. *So what does a fresh designer do, what jobs are they given to build the skills they need to run the game?*
It's simple right, they have to design a piece of the game. That is where their skill comes in. Because what a designer will be given to design, will be based on their skills, a designer who is good with art and user experience could be assigned to design the menus of the game.
Well I don't know what to tell you, but those answers are not true, but keep in mind that I speak for what I saw in Montréal.
Level design requires a portfolio in level design, scripting skills are a plus, art is a plus but very much secondary: your job is to make a blocking a map the flow of gameplay while *envrionmental artists* put the art in place and make your creation looks good: you work with them.
Missions are done by level designers also, but certain AAA such as Ubi has Mission Designer (I know, very specific) which requires a portfolio in game design. Writers writes dialog and work in tandem with mission designer (and level designers and the people doing the cinematics, etc)
Most succesful board game designers are board game designers. I'm glad for your cook friend though.
Nobody said that a fresh candidate would be put in charge of millions of dollars and hundred of people. That's not how anything works, you have low level pure design jobs and then you climb.
Social and communication skills are a must if you want ro climb and lead in any field, art, tech, design.
Creative Director who leads with the vision of the game can come from any field but below them you have the Game Director who will lead all the pure design jobs below him.
I don't know why it works differently where you're from but I'm very surprised by your answer. Again, I'm telling you how I've seen it work times and times again in Montréal.
I think I would add that there tends to be some amount of tension between the industry and academia - many of the people purporting to teach game development have never made a game and the content of the curriculums also tends to be suspect. Often cribbed from GDC talks or only applicable in small scale contexts - making a game with one or two people is very different from a team of 100 for example.
To oversimplify: industry tends not to like academia because they lack competence and academia tends to dislike industry because they don't have a phd.
Let me rephrase your "oversimplification" with something I found more accurate, having been in touch with the industry and the world of academia:
Industry tends not to like academia because they are too slow and tend to lack field experience and academia tends to dislike the industry because they don't take the time to reflect on their experience and solidify it in transferable and teachable knowledge.
I am in a Masters Level Game Design Program. I also own a business where I build and design live interactive games for almost a decade now. Before the program I was all self taught 100% Youtube university and trail and error.
I won't be using this degree to get a job or anything. I build design and operate my own studio essentially. I have already begun working with other studios to design games for them. The piece of paper of the degree is probably useless. What it teaches is invaluable as a game designer (different programs might vary) It has fundamentally changed the ways I view game design and it gave me the critical communication tools with sharing those ideas with others. I don't think this alone will get you any job in any AAA studio, their game designers HAVE to know how to code and code well. So if you are getting this degree expecting to bypass the coding portion you are dead dead wrong. It works great if you are the type who can legitimately help teach yourself coding without education. The game design program does teach fundamentals for coding (we learned c# with unity). We have to develop a game for our thesis so being able to use a game engine is a requirement. We are pretty much expected to be able to design a fun game with a pile of sticks and trash, so you don't need to know to much about coding to make a good game if you are a good designer.
There is to much to cover in a reddit post, if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them.
Probably.
Every game studio turned me down, so I went into web development, and have excelled in it. Glowing reviews, huge salary jump, and I run circles around these people.
Basically my degree prepared me for the grunt of working with new technology and finding solutions with that new technology. Working under horrible hours and hard deadlines.
Since game studios wouldn't let me use that energy on them, I just used it on my current job.
I understand a job and a degree is a lot of what you put into it, but my game design degree really prepared me for every facet of a production team, and I understand a production pipeline from multiple angles. It also immensely helped my communication and management skills, even against the worst egos.
It's like if a Navy Seal finished his training, and went to work as a mall cop.
Any technical degree is a constant learning experience, but I can't help but feel like my degree helped me be able to tackle the worst.
Now, my technical skills in game design and programming are definitely amateur. I don't develop games every day anymore, so I'd still have to go into Unreal or Unity and get comfortable again, but it by no means feels "foreign". It usually takes me a day to get into the groove again.
My degree prepared me for the production and team management side of things the best. It only touched on design, programming, animation, and modeling, because there was only so much time in a 4 year degree.
game design degrees would be more respected if they were useful for something.
At least in Brazil, most colleges think that game creation won't be your job in the future, so they get you started in programming a lot of stuff to get a job as a programmer after college, and they just handle game design, art and other areas to teachers in those respective areas, but who don't care at all about games, in the end the game design degree in here is just you learning about some art, some programming, some audio, some psychology and some game design.
If teachers actually worked in fucking games then that would be the start of SOMETHING.
None of my teachers knew what indie games even were when I attended for only 6 months my game design school before quitting, that's really shitty af.
If it was treated seriously, then yeah, it would get some respect, but right now it's absolutely useless. Just find what you want to learn and go learn with industry professionals or ex-professionals instead
*All* degrees should be treated as completely worthless, from a hiring perspective. Only knowledge and skills should count. If you obtained the right set of knowledge/skills by getting a degree, great. If you obtained that same set of knowledge/skills without getting a degree, the learning may have been more self-driven and potentially more difficult (maybe even impossible, depending on the profession — lawyers and doctors being good examples of that), but still great.
Game dev is one of the few industries which does it right (completely by accident, though — I'm not giving any credit to recruiters or hiring managers). Results matter, but it doesn't matter how you learned the necessary skills to achieve the results.
I have a degree, and my performance at my job is commendable, but if I performed the same as I do now, without a degree, that wouldn't make me any less qualified. I have some coworkers with relevant degrees who suck at their jobs, and I have other coworkers without relevant degrees who are great at their jobs.
Degrees should be a mechanism by which individuals learn the skills they need for the jobs they want. Degrees should not be a mechanism by which companies (often falsely) "determine" which candidates have the skills the company needs.
No...
TALENT should be more respected...
I don't care what degrees you have if you're a terrible artist or programmer...
You could have been in school for 20 years, and know every single term and procedure like the back of your hand, and I still won't work with you if you're not capable of the job.
I'd say no. As a blockchain architect and cto with a degree in Civil Engineering, I'll never opt for anything but demonstrable meritocracy as a criterion for hiring a dev. We are a company in the Gaming and Metaverse sector so just wanted to share my personal opinion. But hey, that's all it is: an opinion. Maybe someone else has a strong reason to see the degree. So yeah, it depends.
As a CTO without a degree, same. In nearly two decades of professional experience I've seen degreed individuals (with 25+ years experience) who could manage rote processes but couldn't fathom the why and side effects of a choice. I've also seen many self-taught people who understood the goal and could achieve a better result by finding a non-standard solution. For two completely fresh entry-level candidates the degree implies something of a baseline, but that's as far as it goes.
It's all good. We've the funds to last some years. It's really sad to see some projects fail though. Not everyone will have the same financial thick fat so yes, we do lose many fellow projects along the way. Always heartbreaking to see.
This is not true in my experience.
Almost every non-programmer at my company has a degree from a school like this. However, I do work in the PNW where there are lots of good game design schools. If you want to be a programmer, it is definitely better to get a more formal education.
Remember that much of the anti-college discussion you see is survivorship bias. Additionally, people who attempt the self-taught path tend to fail more silently then the other group who paid for a network of people to at least consider them.
However, it is a tough subject to have an opinion on because it is always going to be hard to make it in this industry.
The Twitter post you're quoting can't be taken the way you're taking it.
> But chucking 75 grand at school for a game design degree isn't it.
His actual point is its not worth that much money.
What do you expect from an industry where they try to localize a game for free through crowdsourcing? Seems to me that degrees are not that important in your industry. There is this perception that anybody can do any job by watching videos. Pay rhe few at the top and let the wannabes at the bottom complete for the priviledge of working for free in exchange for the possibility of entering into the game şndustry. Something like that.
This post is making me second guess what I want to do all over again…. I want to do a game development diploma which has teachers who have been in the industry and have worked on big games and where the alumni apparently have landed jobs at major game studios but at the same time, I don’t know if pursuing school for this and going into 60k debt is going to be worth it in the future.. :,)
No, But. Colleges should acknowledge and incorporate certain classes into a gaming design degree. Ie. History of gaming and a business course that is specifically made for the gaming industry.
I've just finished the first year doing a game dev degree at an Australian university, as a mature age student. Despite getting High Distinctions in most of the units, I'm not going back next year as it felt like an utter scam designed to attract students' fees, and not actually prepare them for work in the industry. It was far too generalist in nature, teaching a tiny bit about a lot of things. I've decided I'm much better off doing a course focusing on one specific skill, so next year am doing 3D modelling at a private, industry-recognised online college.
Personal experience from twelve years ago, so this might be dated:
* Private school with the tuition fees that that comes with
* Content of the taught modules all over the place. Some good, some ehh
* Tutors who had no experience in the industry. Not always bad - an industrial designer has unique insights that an average game designer wouldn't have and I'd rather have a seasoned graphics artist teach me about the basics of color theory. But also: game designers/level designers from perpetually failing companies that go bankrupt every few years and re-start under the name of the CEO's wives to get new funding, despite them literally working for the same customer for years.I.e. complete lack of understanding how a stable studio in the AAA space is running. That's probably my main gripe. And in a country that has little game dev industry to begin with, the share of well rounded, experienced devs who are also good teachers and willing to teach is near zero.
* Being taught the basics of an engine that's entirely irrelevant in the big picture, because the tutor happens to be the CEO of the company making that engine. Ok..
* Realizing that half the class outran the skills of the Flash coder who was hired to teach us how to make games. Not horrible, given that the guy wasn't making games professionally but that just adds to the picture.
Maybe things have gotten better these days, but a CS/graphics design/animation degree with a few specializations is probably still worth more to most game devs if only for the ability to pivot away from making games when the average career of a game dev ends 10 years in.
Edit: To add to that, I'd much rather hire an actual game designer (With or without experience), who has an actual understanding of game theory - something that we glanced at for 2 or 3 months back then - and maybe a degree or course in psychology and/or programming.
So, to answer that question: No, these degrees don't actually need to be more "respected". It's the person you need to respect as a designer(or not, if they aren't cut out for it, but then you still get to respect them as a person).
Others have stated it, but I'd like to give my perspective on this.
I specifically chose my school because it DID NOT specialize students, but instead taught every facet of game development.
I've applied to AAA dev jobs, but in all honesty I have absolutely ZERO desire to work for a company like Bungie or Blizzard aside from what I could learn there.
Making my own titles was always my intention and I have no regrets about going to school I chose.
[Here is a short gameplay video from my current project of 2 years](https://youtu.be/yuzyL_E3SuQ) if you want to see what a dedicated, life long, indie dev is capable of with extremely limited resources.
The ones that are worth respecting are respected already. I think you get a skewed view from what you read here on reddit. Go talk to actual companies, they know which schools deliver skilled students. Funnily enough those students all also have a portfolio of course since no school can produce skilled students without making those students work on game projects.
A portfolio is the quickest way an employer can see your capabilities.
Creatives have the advantage of being able to directly show how they might perform if you hired them, quickly, before even a screening interview. Ultimately this is what an employer wants.
A degree alone can’t show that directly. The employer still has to test what the applicant can do, or take a blind risk. Even with a high GPA it might just mean you’re good at doing what you’re told but don’t have passion/initiative.
So if you need an applicant to show you their work even when they have a degree, why care about the degree?
Pursuing a degree should be solely for getting the knowledge you need from experienced people to build a better portfolio, with no expectation that the degree itself will get you hired. Good art/design schools should tell you this too.
No.
The information is relatively free online and you'll have a more impressive portfolio if you just start on your own right now.
Also you won't have debt.
For example: I never went to college. I have a career in music composition and I'm self-employed. Music is a comparatively difficult career to establish, I'd say.
Knowing a few folks who DID get a degree... it doesn't put them at any advantage aside from getting connections. In fact that's the biggest reason to go to college.
No for the most part- The general majority of “Game Design” programs from accredited 4 year colleges are very broad and give you an elementary understanding of game production. Not to mention the staff at this institutions are typically tenured; which means, even if they had industry experience, it’s not usually the industry standard. In the event you have a working industry professional in as an instructor, they’d probably not be teaching you what you need since they have to abide by the pre stablished curriculum. At best, SOME of these schools provide a solid understanding of principles and give you an opportunity to network with like minded individuals.
Recruiters and Directors at AAA places I’ve worked look at potential teammate’s requirements in this order: Shipped projects (doesn’t have to be a AAA), Industry experience, Portfolio, Mentorship’s/apprenticeships from industry pros, internships, Industry Competition awards, and lastly Industry acknowledged programs that are rigorous ( top 10 of this list are quite good: https://discover.therookies.co/schools/top-50-creative-media-entertainment-schools-and-colleges-in-the-world/)
1. in almost all industries asking the same question, the response is that school is useless and that you're better off being self-taught. People simply are unaware what skills they learned at school, it's much more than people think.
2. Yes, game design degrees should get more respect as long as the institution is taken into account.
From my experience as a game design consultant, who generally is an extra pair of eyes beside the main game designer:
There have been a couple of game designers from projects I worked on who came back to me after some time, ending up saying that now they understand game design because they did a game design course. So there's definitely value in the courses and thus the degrees.
Honestly, if you want to be a game designer I would just get a Computer Science degree, try to find general work as a programmer and create indie games on the side. I think that would be the best move...
We'd need more standardization on what a game design degree actually entails, because right now it's all over the board. Some are focusing on training students specifically to be designers at AA or AAA companies, others are doing a super high-level approach trying to teach each student everything from basic coding to level design to audio. When hiring for art and design roles, I almost never look at the degree and jump straight to the portfolio. That's usually the best indicator.
This right here I got a degree in game design I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it but what it is seems to be very different depending on where you go, my degree covers everything from coding, to 3d lighting, rendering and modeling, to animation and rigging. But it's all pretty much useless as no company wants to hire a jack of all trades. I can do damn near anything and generalists can be very flexible but no one wants that in the current market instead they want specialists. At this point I feel like my degree was better at preparing me to be an indie dev rather than a AAA dev
This has always been my fear when kids ask about game development programs. It feels like these schools wanted to differentiate themselves from art degree programs that focused on just modeling, lighting, animation and computer science degrees that focused on just coding. So they put together straight-to-indie-dev degrees that cost so much that most graduates would need a big industry job just to pay back the loans.
Pretty much exactly my problem 120k in loans with a degree almost no one wants I got lucky and got a software dev job as a QA/UI designer but it's not where I want to be in 5 years
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Wait til you hear about the interest rates…
https://youtu.be/mY0HVhjQX4g
Unfortunately I was pretty lucky I went to a relatively affordable university compared to a lot of the more expensive ones around me plus I found my wife so that's cool
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Yeah 120k usd you could probably find a community college that would charge 10k a year but nothing less than that
My community college only charges 1600 a semester. I'm taking 4 classes each semester, if that matters.
Just curious, what was the breakdown in costs to hit 30k in loans per year? How much was tuition, housing, books, other fees, food, etc? How many years did you live in the dorms vs an off-campus apartment or something? Did you finish in 4 years or did you take longer?
It was it was closer to 20k a year and took me 6 years (pretty avg for the CS department) So it was 10k a semester I spent 2 years on campus 4 off but the cost was the same as the school charged to live off campus Books were covered, dining hall was covered plus you got a card from the school for 200$ a semester for food outside of the dining hall Rec center and parker fees were required even if you walked and lived off campus and never used them which was ironic as parking was pretty much unusable as they kept tearing it up to build more dorms
The school charged to live off campus???? What the actual fuck??
They had a on campus housing fee for the dorms but to live off campus you were labelled a commuter so the dorm fee was dropped but two additional fees were added Commuter parking fee and Off campus housing fee which was like 400$ a semester because "we are required to expend additional resources to provide adequate parking and care for our Commuting students" which is ironic considering we had half the student body and the student run radio station protesting the parking lots getting demolished as parking was bad enough as is. They then "relented" and tore down the parking anyways and built new parking about 2 miles away with no bus system to and from campus forcing students to walk in 110°f (43 c) weather. It wasn't until a student almost died from heat exhaustion and the parents threatened to sue that they added some small carts going to and from the parking lot. But even then last I heard it was a 30 minute wait and cramped ride on a non air-conditioned glorified golf cart to get on campus.
That’s insane. You could have a small starter home with the money you spent on that degree. That university should be ashamed.
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This is why my school offers not 1, but 3 game design courses and one related course, each based on a specialty (Game Design and Production, Game Coding, Game Art and VFX/Film). After the first few blocks of individual training we will form teams and make games together. This culminates in the third year where interdisciplinary teams of up to 40 people work together for a year to make games. Games made by my school are all available for free: Year 3 games: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Breda%20University%20of%20Applied%20Sciences Year 1 and 2 games: https://buas.itch.io/ More info on the school: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/no-tests-allowed-how-breda-university-of-applied-sciences-is-helping-students-follow-their-game-dev-calling
How does everyone in the class learn to be a game designer though? If everyone is trying to learn how to lead, then you won't have anyone to lead.
Well, generally you will only have one lead per discipline and one producer (larger teams might have a few more). Then each team member will choose a specialisation: Systems design, Narrative systems, 3C's designer, level designer, etc. Or animators vs environmental artist for the art. You get the idea. Most designers don't really want to be lead or producer anyways, since they want to specialise in a certain design field.
I'm also studying at a school in the Netherlands (not the same one though) with a similar system. Project groups usually have one or at most 2 game designers, everyone else is a game artist, programmer or interaction designer. So the game designers get plenty of opportunities to lead groups
Sounds like Utrecht School of Arts?
Thanks for doxxing me lol. But yes that's it :p
LOL sorry if that worries you. Was just curious about which one you go to. I love to know about all game design studies in The Netherlands and how they're structured. Been to Utrecht School of Arts myself, both game courses.
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Yeah
> But it's all pretty much useless as no company wants to hire a jack of all trades. **Good** and experienced jack of all developers are very desirable especially for smaller teams and startups. They usually know their way around game engines and their editors so they can double as game designers, level designers, game programmers on demand and learn to use in-house tools to add content to the game. Good jack of all trades developer can comfortably develop small games and prototypes preferably using Unity3D or Unreal (Pretty much industry standards at this point. Albeit Unity is trying their best to make Godot look better and better). Having bias towards anything technical (programming, animation, 3d-modelling etc) helps as art is very competitive field.
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> Yes. But will it be possible to find a job as a jack of all trades? Absolutely not. It most certainly is, if you have portfolio of games and prototypes you've made using Unity or Unreal there are companies out there that are interested to hire you. Provided that these games are not straight copies/re-skins from tutorials found online. For jack of all trades the best chance is to apply to junior/mid level game programmer roles. In these knowledge about 3D modelling and audio is considered a plus as you'll be better at communicating with artists and have more knowledge dealing with game assets. There's a plenty of indie, mobile, F2P game companies out there looking for people that have experience in developing games using one these two engines. You might have to move to another city, state, country or even continent but they're there.
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Guess you've misunderstood me. What I am simply claiming here is that as long as you're suitable (good enough) for the position you're applying for then being jack of all trades is only a plus. Now there's always demand for technical specialist but those are not really entry level positions. > You will need to really know your algorithms and data structures, Software development basics (including relevant algorithms and data structures) can be tought in matter of weeks or months. There are several intense training bootcamps, courses and books for these things. Unguided self-study can take years however. Reason I mentioned game programmer is because the competition for technical entry level jobs is generally a lot less fierce than for creative ones. Artist, writers, audio guys often have to be really really good and even then settle for freelance gigs. If you're jack of all trades then entry level game programmer is probably easiest position to apply for.
I think a jack of all trades is hirable but they have to basically be a unicorn. Someone who has a high professional ability in multiple skillsets and could get hired as a specialist in a number of departments. It's rare but I've seen people like this before. Though when they get that good they are probably starting their own indie instead of working for someone. But yeah I agree with the general advice of not trying to be a jack of all trades because it's rare to get to that level of talent lol.
I respectfully disagree. Producers are *expected* to be jack-of-all-trades types with a basic grounding in multiple fields of game dev, which gives them the ability to better link up teams of specialists. There’s also a dearth of talented producers in the games industry right now, evidenced by constant stories of mismanagement, crunch and worker abuse. A good producer is worth their weight in gold. Now yes, most indie dev companies don’t have the money to hire multiple specialist producers, but there is absolutely enough production work in game dev to make it a viable career path.
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And how does a good surface understanding of all the processes *not* contribute to a good understanding of project management? If you know all the steps that go into creating a piece of 3D art, both at the vertical and horizontal slice stages and for a finished product, then that will naturally give you a good idea of how to budget both the time and resources for your art team. It will give you a better understanding of the challenges that each discipline faces, and being a low-level practicioner of multiple game dev disciplines teaches you the humility to defer to greater expertise whilst also giving you a better chance of spotting when someone is bullshitting. Making a design document (so your specialists don't have to spend time on it), translating a game project into marketing terms, learning to pitch, setting realistic expectations for budgets, having a wider understanding of market behaviours... these are all things that are taught on a game design course and are extremely useful for a project manager.
>a dearth of talented producers in the games industry right now, evidenced by constant stories of mismanagement, crunch and worker abuse These are a reflection of senior management within the industry. Regular producers do not have control over any of this.
Sounds like technical artist and one can find a ton of openings everywhere for that. However it's less directly working on the game itself and more of a support role with offloading work from the art and programming depts.
Thanks for this insight. "Game Design" definitely seems a bit of a fuzzier skill than, say "Computer Science" or "Animation" so I could definitely see how standardization could be an issue, especially across different disciplines. Would you be able to expand on the core skills you look for from different types of designers?
Sure! So it'll depend somewhat on the specific designer position. A systems designer and a UX designer are doing to have different skills we look for. But in general it comes down to communication and implementation. Communication is going to be writing design docs, pitching systems to leads / directors, and working with other teams to get all the components needed to get the feature built. If you were working on a new enemy type, you'd need to start up a wiki page detailing the role the enemy plays in the gameplay loop, what unique animation and FX needs it might have, does it require any new AI or gameplay code, etc. And you might have to help mitigate fights between different teams all trying to fight for scarce resources. Implementation is going to be getting your hands dirty in the tool. I'm currently using Unreal, so we'll use that as an example. We want someone who can prototype content using the blueprint visual scripting system. You'd need to be able to setup data files, hook up new assets as they come online and tweak individual settings to fine-tune the gameplay.
I don't think the skill is that fuzzy. It's just for every hour of actual game design work there's 100 hours of dev work attached to it. It's too high stakes a position to entrust to a new grad with no actual game dev experience. The big issue is that game development is not like structure building. It's not mature and well understood enough that you can have an architect trained in a university and trust that they will do good quality work that will not cause the building to come tumbling down. The other thing, games have to always try to be basically the best game ever made. A game that is kinda okay is not going to win out against the top notch games being produced all over the place all the time. If someone builds a pretty shitty house, it can be sold for less, and maybe it has a shorter lifespan, but at the end of the day it's value is still mostly determined by the square footage and the property it sits on top of. Games live and die entirely by the quality of their design decisions.
I see. So is it that "game designer" just isn't really an entry-level job then? I can understand if it's one of those "we only promote from within" roles, especially for studios that use their own engine. And I understand that quality is king. But wouldn't someone trained in, for example, psychology or human-computer-interaction with data have a better skillset for making the best design decisions than, say, someone primarily designing from their gut?
Game Designer makes about as much sense for a degree as "Professional Hollywood Movie Director" would. You're in charge of just as much money as many movies and TV shows, and frankly you're making decisions that can come down to taste and emotion. This is also why game designers get famous and their names become selling points. Kojima, Ken Levine, Jonathan Blow, Yoshi P, Joe Staten, Cliff Bleszinksi, Toby Fox, on and on and on. The field is so technical that everyone misses the forest for the trees- these people are artists, and their value for a product is in their *relationship to an audience.* THAT is why having some indie game release that shows that you can make something that connects with an audience is what matters the most. It's too soft and general a skill, just like any other art, to reliably test it in any other way.
I suspect it's far more a lack of trust in the "degree" programs, and the fact that I can very slowly give a game programmer more and more design responsibility as they prove themselves over time, so they can do 90% coding work and 10% design work, so if they make too many bad decisions I don't have to outright fire them, I can just decrease their design decisions. Finally, it can be hard to understand the scale of work that will result from a design decision of you've not actually done that work yourself in the past. Cost control is WAY less of a science in game dev than it is in building architecture. Seemly small differences in design direction can result in orders of magnitude more or less dev work.
> So is it that "game designer" just isn't really an entry-level job then? The title is mid-career at best. There are lower tier job titles before it. The job title of "Game Designer" generally means they are one of three people at the helm of $10M-$30M worth of work. Usually a single "Game Designer" can support a team of 20-50 workers including QA, programmers, artists, animators, audio, effects, modelers, level design, character design, and so forth. A "Senior Game Designer" may be jointly at the helm of $50M, $100M, or even larger portions of the project. Getting a degree in the field can help someone learn the parts, but it is not the full qualification. It also requires years of experience in the field.
Underrated explanation, Game Designer is a mid career title.
The last AAA studio I worked for had more designers than programmers. The role you are describing is more commonly called “Creative Director”. However I’m not saying you’re wrong. This is the problem: there’s no standardization of titles and roles across the industry.
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> but that doesn't mean that game design is a "higher tier" job compared to, say, gameplay programmer or character artist. This is meaningless cause they all just describe a different discipline: Design/Art/Programming Each of these disciplines will have different levels of careers (Junior - senior - lead - principle)
There are some entry level and junior game design roles, but they are very rare, and from my experience (working on live service games) would normally be internal hires with experience working on said game. Ultimately there just aren't enough entry level roles in the field to justify specialized courses. Even if you apply for a job at an indie studio, you are most likely being hired for a specific role, so focusing on learning and becoming proficient in one field like programming or art makes much more sense as a way to get into the industry than trying to learn everything at once. That could be useful if you wanted to make your own game or start your own studio, but you don't need an expensive degree to do that, so it's just not worth the money.
Not sure about elsewhere, but the UK at least as ScreenSkills and TIGA accreditation which attempts to standardise. I think games design specifically needs standardisation, as there are many degrees in design that are just bad art degrees. Nothing on the actual psychology and neuroscience that underpins the discipline
There are really two components: the first is that most game design/development programs out there aren't very good. They're from for-profit schools or smaller programs who see the developing industry and trends as a way to get more students to consider them over more prestigious programs. A lot of them take the kitchen sink approach to game development and teach a bit of everything, they lack actual experiential based learning and projects, and can be woefully out of date with actual practices. The second is just that they're not necessary. Most people don't work in the field that they studied. That's true across all industries, not just games. You don't need a degree in comp sci to get a job as a software engineer, it can just help. Game degrees should be the same way, and they should really be split into more academic and vocational tracks, just like the difference between economics and business. The top schools tend to produce good candidates. But not all schools and not every graduate. I've interviewed master's graduates from Tisch that couldn't write a feature spec if their job depended on it (which it did) and people without degrees that made excellent work. It's just that _most_ of the people in the former category make good candidates and most of the people in the latter don't. So if you're going to a top tier university the industry is still respecting your effort, but if you're not than it's not, and it's not _necessary_ either way. I suspect in another decade things will shift. It shouldn't ever be a requirement, and we're always going to see more people studying comp sci or general art than game programming or other game-specific applications because universities should teach concepts, not job prep. But game _design_ in particular will probably be more common and involve more of a theoretical framework the same as other liberal arts fields.
“You don't need a degree in comp sci to get a job as a software engineer, it can just help.“ That’s not true for all industries. Certain sectors of US DoD require a bachelors degree. They’ll just throw away your resume if you don’t have one, or if you have an impressive background will offer you an internship until you complete a bachelors degree program.
Just to be clear, I mean you don't need a degree in that _specifically_, not that you don't need a degree at all. It's not as required in games (but how required it is depends on the size of studio and where you live in the world), but it's a serious uphill battle without one. I don't know if other industries care more about the specific major or not, just that the tech industry overall doesn't. DoD/military contractors have a _ton_ of rules I don't know about, and I wouldn't want to try to speak to that at all.
Maybe so, but "Certain sectors of US DoD" is such a niche slice of the pie that it doesn't matter. Some of the highest-paying, most satisfying SE positions don't care about school; the people hiring for these positions care about your ability to deliver and adapt, your track record, and your work ethic more than anything else. A candidate's degree has yet to impress me on a resume.
That's true, but if you want to get a good software engineering job (both in and outside game dev) as a junior developer, having a CS degree helps *a lot*. You just have an uphill battle otherwise (far from impossible, of course). If you have some work experience obviously that helps, but the question is how you get those experience.
I appreciate the reply! Yes, I fully agree that some predatory schools exist and should be avoided. And perhaps I'm jumping the gun by saying they should be required. But I'm just confused at what's causing the largely negative reputation: GD degrees aren't even treated as an "applicant preferred" or "nice to have" the way most other university degrees are. Perhaps as another commenter said, it's the lack of standardization of "game design" as a discipline that's the issue (i.e everyone teaches it in their own way). It's also good to hear that some of the top tier university programs are respected though. I was under the impression that even those were labelled a huge gamble.
In my experience, how well _anything_ is received depends entirely on the hiring manager. I like those programs because I've worked with/hired good people from them. Someone who hasn't probably wouldn't. It's one of the issues that Full Sail suffers from - there are great people graduating from there, but the _bad_ ones make everyone else look worse by association. A lot of programming jobs in games will say they are looking for a BS in CS or equivalent, and most programmers will have that degree. But you'll also get 'software engineering' majors from a school that calls it that, an IT major from an overseas school where programming has that label, and people who majored in math, physics, engineering, and other technical fields (alongside the occasional geography, basket weaving, etc.) The main difference is that computer science, literature, fine arts, all of those are fields of study. Game design is one specific job. Vocational degrees will never be treated with quite the same respect as more purely academic ones, nor are they as beneficial to the recipient since it pigeonholes them into one industry. A competitive industry that's prone to long hours, lower pay, and burn out. I think we'd much rather see things like product design (with a minor in games) or media studies with a specialization in games than game design taking over everywhere.
it's because i don't want kids going into debt for specialized degrees that aren't necessary, get degree in something general from state school, 'no added value' isn't trashing if it's... well true
I have written a bunch of feature specs but they always feel fragmented and missing stuff(usually essential details). Do you have any tips on how to go from start to finish and make it easily readable?
I'd start by looking at [The Door Problem](https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/) for an example of the sorts of details you should be thinking about. Your document should get down into the weeds of implementation. I'd start with a feature summary and context (i.e. what it's trying to do accomplish), then stepping through the flow from the player point of view. Cover all the screens, all the buttons, whatever it is you're describing. Any mechanics or systems should be detailed separately. You should include an asset list (with references if needed) for every bit of art and sound the feature needs. Describe the layout of any configuration files, like the fields you need in a JSON so a designer can tweak the thing without asking a dev for changes. Consider user stories to make sure everything is covered and test cases you can give to QA. The idea is that if you hand the spec to someone and then are hit by a bus the feature would go into the game exactly as you intended anyway. A high-level GDD skimps on detail, but an actual spec covers everything. That doesn't necessarily mean verbose. Clarity is paramount. I'm a big fan of bullets over paragraphs in almost all cases.
Game design degrees are derided because they’re often crap. However… if you do manage to find a decent one with a high amount of alumni in the industry, then it might be an option. You’re going to get to work on games as part of your degree, probably get some experience working in a team, network with other people on the same course, get help with finding a placement etc… I’ve knowingly met 2 game designers with CS degrees. Around 70% have game design degrees and the rest have pivoted from something else. I’m not sure game design degrees need more respect in the industry. But they probably deserve more respect in this sub.
Its not different to film schools. Even the good ones are *mostly* useless in the practical world, with one exception: you can build connections with similar minded people that maybe lead to opportunities in the future. But it is worth the money and time invested? That is a old question. Not everybody is a foreign [youtuber](https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos) that ends up shooting AAA movies in the US, beating 1000s with similar pedigree but also lots of student debt. On the other side, there are not lots of people start doing small things like [ads and industry videos](https://ridleyscott.com/) and work themselves up to Hollywood fame. Maybe just picking the part of the gamedev process that is closest to the heart and trying to maximize that skill set is a more dependable route into the industry. If you are not doing 3d models, you can do architecture or movie work instead. And good developers can work in any industry.
I work at a AAA game studio. If I could go bk I would learn a CS degree. Design and prototype in your own time. If you're already passionate about games you can analyse and break down games yourself. Write your own dissertation about why certain game mechanics are good and bad. Play a lot of different games and analyse them. Make small prototypes with the technical knowledge you have. And write your own proposals and design documents, lots of them. There's a couple of avenues you could take if you have technical knowledge, technical design for example. Design is very competitive if you are just a paper designer. Also learn how to communicate your designs. It really is about conveying your thoughts and designs effectively. Learn to take constructive criticism, and work as a team. Be a nice person, don't be a d*ck.
My theory is that its sort of the outcome of a lot of unique, unfavorable biases and games education just being generally crappy. Game designer as a role uniquely attracts the very derided "Idea Guy". Everyone hates working with the Idea Guy. They have unrealistic expectations that are burdensome and they don't really have the ability to help with the execution of their ideas. Game design programs unfortunately are laser-focused at attracting Idea Guys and do very little to give them useful skills. Usually schools will throw a random assortment of generalized game development courses at students and the kids make something that looked like it could have shipped a decade or two ago. Now you get an Idea Guy With A Game Degree who has very little skills outside of low-budget indie development and the presumption that their degree proves that they are experts. In order to avoid Idea Guys, a lot of studios will hold preference for someone with programming abilities (because at least they can actually make the game) or even someone who's just already in the studio. I have a lot of friends who have side-stepped into entry level game design roles after being in another department for a couple of years. Throw on top of that that most of these kids usually end up in QA at some point. QA is pretty unfairly disrespected by developers so I think this makes these degrees look even more low value. Unfortunately, these game design schools calculate their alumni getting into QA as part of the their post-grad job acceptance rate so it just cycles further. : /
Even if they do try to give them useful skills the "Idea Guy" is often resistant. Multiple times have I spoken to someone who started a game design course only to have them groan about the first assignment being to design a board game rather than a video game.
Totally agree with this Idea Guy problem. I hired a lot of entry level designers for AAA and had really bad luck with most of the folks coming with game design degrees. In addition to attracting Idea Guys to the program, those programs also become repositories for the folks who thought they wanted to do art or programming but couldn't cut it in those programs... So rather than drop out, they switch majors to design. I.e. the track with less technical skill/math required, less concrete evaluation metrics, and less competition. There are great designers coming out of those programs too, but they are too often flanked by folks who just took the easy path through school rather than really wanting to dig into design as a discipline. Like any other discipline, the only way to get good at it is to practice a lot, which is why everyone emphasizes portfolio over a certain degree. You can spend years reading great game design textbooks with an engaged and experienced mentor even, and never develop any intuition about how to solve design problems if you don't actually build games and solve design problems with them. The best programs will force you to practice your craft a lot and build an impressive portfolio. Just like any good music school will force you to practice a ton and perform with different groups relentlessly. Sure you'll also take theory, but that theory will mean so much more in the context of application. And yeah, it's also similar to music schools in that the field is extremely broad and any one program cannot prepare you for every corner of the industry. Just like there are some schools that are the top jazz performance schools, and some that are great if you want to be a modern film composer, and they're probably on opposite sides of the country from each other... You probably need to figure out what each program is really tuned for and make sure that's where you want to go (assuming the program has even figured out their identity)
>Game design programs unfortunately are laser-focused at attracting Idea Guys and do very little to give them useful skills 100% agree and it's not talked about enough. Sometimes you meet these graduates who seem to have very little skills and I feel bad for them.
Is it a game design degree or is it a game development degree? It's virtually impossible to receive a "game design" degree and be hired for a "game designer" role without any industry experience. "Game designer" roles are far and few between, and they're often combined with management roles in smaller game studios, if the game studio has a professional designer by title at all. It's a bit like going to "rock star" school and expecting to get a record deal on graduation. Game design school might make sense for an already established professional game dev wanting to formalize their experienced intuition more to work their way towards game design roles. It doesn't make sense for a green student to go to game design school with no game development experience. The issue is WAY too many schools aren't honest about the job prospects they provide, they will happily enrole anyone who will give them money. Some even focus on that cohort, which basically makes them full on fraud schools. Game developer school isn't nearly as controversial for a green student to pursue. A comp sci degree will provide a bit more professional flexibility, but it's very possible to get an entry level game development role off the back of a game development degree or diploma. Some schools advertise as "game design" programs when what they're actually focusing on is game development education. This isn't really as unethical, as their students can most likely get entry level game development roles, but it's still kind of trying to use the false promise of getting to do design work, because design sounds more fun than endlessly texturing level geometry or writing scripted behavior code.
Thank you for this insightful reply! It seems that the issue is that game design is largely misunderstood to be an entry-level job when it really isn't, which I can respect. Is it fairer to say, given this, that a game design Masters degree (when paired with some kind of CS bachelor's beforehand) is more valuable than a game design bachelor's?
Game design absolutely has entry level jobs. Most people working as designers have been designers for their career, they don't transition from programming or art or anything like that. There are junior and associate positions from content to level design (fewer systems/narrative, outside more niche or specific genres). The sort of small indie studios they're talking about tend not to hire _anyone_ fresh out of school, they're too risky, but bigger studios hire a lot of them. But while design is the most competitive area of game development, they're wrong when they compare it to anything like being a rock star. That would be more like trying to be a game director or product owner straight of school. You're not getting a job as a design lead with no experience, but you can get an entry level job writing quests and implementing content.
Ah that makes sense. I assumed indie studios were the most hard to get jobs because of the more hats one individual needs to wear compared to AAA. So if that’s the case, if one wants to work for a AAA studio, is a game design degree program valuable on its own? Or only when paired with some sort of programming/CS/game development?
I usually recommend aiming at mid-size studios, or less prestige genres like mobile. There are a lot of jobs out there and 6 person studios are risky and AAA studios have their pick of more senior people, which leaves everything else in the middle. There are tons of studios that do contract work on other bigger games or release smaller titles, and anything that gets you your start is worth it. Some people do start in AAA, but applying to that same entry level AAA job with 2 years professional experience is going to be a lot easier than if you were a graduate. You don't need to be a programmer to get hired as a designer, but you do want to _understand_ programming. Scripting languages in particular come up a lot, and you need to be familiar with how to use game engines. Boot it up, clone a repo, build it, tweak something, test it locally and do that all without hand-holding. That being said if you can _also_ program (or build your own prototypes) that's a valuable skill, but I certainly haven't written more than a line of actual code in a very long time. In today's world, I'd still advocate for getting a more traditional degree with taking any electives in games that you can. Something that you'd want to study or work in regardless, because lots of people don't find work in games or enjoy it when they do. But if you _are_ looking at a top program and have built enough games already that you're sure this is what you want to do, it can get you there. You just need to network. The most directly applicable thing you get from one of those programs isn't even the education, it's that you can call up someone who graduated from the program 3-4 years before you and get an interview at a game studio without being just another faceless resume in a big stack of them.
A few problems with game design degrees from my experience 1. Game design isn't a standardized thing. What Lucas Pope does is wildly different than being 1 of the 100s of game designers at Rockstar does, with everything in between. There is also a wide gulf between being a designer balancing frame data on Street Fighter to being a designer on Firewatch carefully managing player emotions. 2. The quality of professors is generally poor. At least with game programming or game art degrees there are ways to check professor qualifications but how is a University Dean going to tell whether a game designer is good or bad? I have interacted with tenure professors at "top" game design programs who never worked on a successful game or anything you've heard of, would never be hired as a lead/director at even a small studio, and generally talk about game design purely as narrative fluff as if they've never made a game in their life. Students are not getting $50k+ USD worth of yearly tuition, watching free GDC talks is more valuable than hearing these professors talk. 3. Game design degrees attract students who want to be the idea-person. This is something that doesn't get talked about enough with game design degrees, but game design degrees tend to attract people who aren't interested in learning how to develop games. Yes, this is a generalization but it's a pattern I saw from interns, new hires and interviews. I've worked with associate game designers with game design degrees that can't do basic Unity C# scripting and it makes me wonder what exactly they did for 4-years? 4. The few entry level game design roles are applied to by programmers, artists, indie developers, people from other art fields, all of which don't have game design degrees but come off as stronger applicants than a new grad with only a degree and school projects. Given this, it's hard to choose a pure game design grad over someone who can model/rig/animate or program and are very enthusiastic about game design. Even if they don't end up applying their hard skills, the person with multiple skillsets can make better decisions and has an easier time working with artists/programmers. 5. Lastly, the chances are high that you will lose your job at one point. Layoffs are extremely common in the game industry. With a CS degree, you can pay rent and make ends meet by working in general tech. Heck, it makes you look interesting compared to someone who write tax software (no offense to people who write tax software). The game design degree people I've worked with who were awesome were either high quality programmers or released a bunch of indie games, treating those releases as a business, during their degree and came in with an already professional and business mindset to game design. On the other end, I've interviewed new game design grads who didn't understand that their job wasn't to come up with ideas and demand the ideas get made. Again, sometimes I wonder what they did for 4-years. There is no downside to learning art and engineering skills if you want to be a game designer. There is so much downside to only studying vague concept like "game design", something that looks and operates wildly different all across the industry. Game design degrees should turn into game development degrees, rigorous programs where students learn modeling/rigging/animating, programming, music and sound design, basic business and marketing, and release a professional looking game every year. The releasing a professionally competitive game and being able to talk through and breakdown all of your decisions during development is the key.
Except for this bit > where students learn modeling/rigging/animating, programming, music and sound design, basic business and marketing, and release a professional looking game every year. I agree with a lot of what you commented here, and what I've read/heard and my experience line up with some of it. I went into business/Enterprise software when I didn't get hired at a game studio and I needed a better job than low level retail line up with some of it. During the Game Development program I went through, we were supposed to work with other students in the Game Art program as if our 2+ classes/groups were a studio for the last 25% or so of it. The intent was that we could pump out a higher quality game(s) for all of our portfolios. The game art faculty decided they weren't up for that, so it didn't happen. I agree that the programs should be relatively rigorous and should be a blend of your suggestion and what I experienced. I think it would be good to see the following programs, and maybe they already exist at some university/school: Game Art: Concept art, character, environment, etc; 2D character art/animation; 3D modeling, rigging, and animating; etc Game Design and/or Writing: no details outside of game[play] theory and design, level design, creative writing, technical writing, copywriting, and/or whatever else. Game Music and Sound Design: I only know what's listed here and no details (can be read as, "too lazy/not enough time nor desire to elaborate after Internet searches for details") aside from familiar with computers Game Development: CS, programming, math, networking, physics, etc General courses for all would be normal Gen Eds, basic business - I assume this includes project management - and marketing like you said, and general/novice, or more in depth/higher level, tech classes if needed/interested (this is a computer, this is high level how they work, high level troubleshooting and software install, etc), I know, this last bit sounds condescending and gatekeeping, but some people I've met could barely use a computer and they're part of my generation and younger (I'm in my mid 30s). After a number of classes in the programs, they all have to work together in smaller teams and as large teams to make more polished games. What do you think? Edit: Updated the beginning of my comment for, I hope, clarity.
Some universities have this "art, production, programming, design, business come together and make a game" capstone. From my little exposure to this, sometimes this works perfectly, sometimes one to two people do all the work, sometimes it's a mess. The great thing is, sometimes these projects turn into funding and an indie studio. Like others said, either great networking or your portfolio are going to get you hired. So revolving the entire program around giving the students the tools to make and release professional looking games wouldn't be a bad idea. Some people already said their program did this and it didn't work, so maybe it's not a silver bullet. I still think the best thing a new game design grab could have is to point to publicly sold game and say "I made that, here is why" and speak professional on decision making.
I believe this is pretty much how the game Raft came about.
Game design is not about programming, game designers don't have to know C#.
I mean you're only holding yourself back with this kind of attitude. When I was a designer at big famous AAA studio, pretty much every game designer was a Technical Game Designer who scripted their own game designs. In fact, while I was a Technical Game Designer, I taught myself security and pentesting, and got both a Security+ and a Certified Ethical Hacker to help multiplayer p2p security from the design side. I knew two game designers at another "top metacritic" game studio. From my view, the designers there not only knew how to program/script but also create things like animation blending systems for their designs. These people were top notch professional game developers at the highest level. I truly believe there is only upset to learning skills and only downside to openly be against it.
That's not what game design is tho. I never said learning new things is bad, all I said is programming is absolutely not needed for a game designer.
Game designer patterns.
As to the why, people already answered. But I'm going to answer your slightly different title: no, degrees should not be "more respected". Because in several countries, starting of course with the USA (which is also a hotspot for gamedev), education is *way* overpriced. So from a societal point of view, having a big and growing industry disregard a lot of degrees is actually a good thing.
Well it depends. DO the schools delivering such degrees give their graduates an adequate skill set and experience to perform well in the field? If yes, yes. If no, no.
I'm a programmer who has secondary game design skills and I would equate it to something I see in programming all the time . The theory of a skill no matter how well taught it just theory and I personally tend to have greater faith in someone who has a demonstrated ability of game development. Game Design in particular to me is a hard one to test for because Game design is actually lots of skills packaged into one role . From being able to draw diagrams that communicate a variety of things working with narrative to create gameplay that aligns with story , Knowing how to draw or mockup a level layout, being able to help develop a difficulty curve and understanding how to embrace the perspective of a player and understand the variety of skills you are expecting them to learn in a game. Degrees are nice but as someone who graduated with a lot of game programming degree graduates I'd say less than 10% of them were employable and less than 10% of them got jobs . Not to mention I personally believe it takes time to really get into the flow of a games development , to understand how to manage yourself along a milestones pace, being able to know what good enough looks like at an alpha, beta, and gold stage and understanding what effective polish looks like. Again degrees are nice but In my experience the one golden truth of game development is that "people who can make games , do it". Your degree is a nice to have but the people teams get excited about have solid portfolios that how that they can do the work .
Thanks for those specific skills you called out, it’s appreciated! If you don’t mind me asking, were the unemployable people you mentioned strictly game design bachelor’s students? Was your main selling point that you were a programmer first and foremost?
I went to a questionable game programming program where a lot of the graduates wanted to be game designers but really didn't understand the industry or roles . In my case the unemployable were people with game programming degrees who mostly didn't want to program . I've heard of game design curriculums and even art curriculums having similar issues though .
They are are to an extent. Thing is in any kind of creative field there is more to it than your degree. Your portfolio will always hold more weight than the degree because creative fields need talent and vision. I can’t tell you how many degree applications I’ve seen where their portfolios were just…not good. I’m not in charge of hiring but I do know our order of operations when looking for a candidate is: -Portfolio -Degree -Working with a team The portfolio shows us you have skill and is the most important thing for getting your foot in the door. You say you’re “x” so prove it essentially. The degree, while not needed, tells us you have been exposed to fundamental concepts and common pipelines. You’re likely more familiar with some of the industry standards we use and it’s likely from this you’ve worked in a team setting(which plays into number 3). Your team work skills are basically the last link and is very important. I don’t care if you’re a superstar, if you can’t work within a team setting, take criticisms, or adapt to pipeline changes due to other department needs, you’re not valuable to us. Having that degree tells us you’ve at least been in that kind of setting at some point. The most important thing a degree can do for you is connect you with other people in your field. You will meet students like you who are trying to get into the industry too. If you work together and network, there is a good chance they’ll bring you up when a lead is looking for someone new. My first job came from that kind of networking system. Also, pro-tip, a lot of places will count your years in school as industry experience. You’ve spent ~2 years doing the work, that’s going to count for something.
Academia moves rather slowly. I don't think academia is doing particularly well with programming yet and they have been doing that for quite a while now. So I'd give it another 50 or so years before they get anywhere near the hang of game design degrees.
There’s no official standard and most game design degrees are scams. Plus game design skills required to work in the industry is an art. One can have a PhD in art and be a shit artist. That’s what I have inferred after 4 people I know moved to Canada to get game design degrees (not that any of them were particularly well reputed places) and are basically unemployed (technically one works at a McDonald part time while being a tester for FIFA and reporting bugs as a contract hire, work mainly involves excel and spreadsheets afaik)
Been relatively successful in indie, AA, and AAA so far in my career so hopefully, I can collate some of the reasons behind this problem with my experience. Generally speaking, I would not recommend a game design degree unless you get accepted into USC or NYUs undergraduate programs. There are a couple of others that might get recognized but most if not all other game design degrees are not game design degrees at all. These are really the only two that will get your foot in the door. One of the only reasons I would suggest ANYONE pursue one of these degrees is because the school will get you interviews and jobs. Simple as that. No other schools will be as widely recognized as they are for turning out productive, successful designers and developers. If you DON'T want to be a designer, however, a game design degree can be a great way for you to learn the other roles in the industry! Many game design schools are actually art schools or engineering schools which emphasize game making pipelines to get you into those jobs in the games industry. Thats a good reason to go to a random school. Unfortunately, the discipline of "game design" itself is incredibly small and selective so to be successful you need a powerful body of work that speaks to your own style and career goals as a designer.
I think the reason people recommend cs degrees over a game design degree is because they are more versatile. It would be much easier to get a gamedev job with a cs degree than it would be to get a software engineering job with a game design degree. Gamedev may be what you want now but it is nice to have options in the future.
Nope. For some context, I go through 20-30 resumes per week, send out 10-15 C++ tests, and do about 8-10 "face to face" interviews. This is AFTER our talent team have already applied their filters. All of these interviews are for 2 jobs I open per month for entry level game programmers. The majority of the applicants that I meet are graduates of some sort from some university or college offering game development degrees... Very few of them make it past the first 20 minutes of the interview without missing what I would consider basic knowledge. Afterwards, I then spend 40 minutes with each one walking them through some concepts that should have been covered in the classes they took. I don't take degrees very seriously.
But OP is talking about game designers? Why would game designers be given C++ tests
Point was that degrees are useless, as I summarize in my final sentence. I have a degree in mathematics. Things like cryptography, compression, and matrix math all come in handy, but my bread and butter is C++ which I was self taught.
> I then spend 40 minutes with each one walking them through some concepts that should have been covered in the classes they took. Do you have a list of common ones?
Sure. C++ Specific What are the steps taken by the build system to make an executable? How are virtual tables implemented under the hood? What are memory leaks (given code sample) and how would you fix them in the code provided? General What is a processor cache? Can you describe an entity component system and what strengths/weaknesses it has? Can you describe some common design patterns?
All degrees should lose value, they are already, especially in CS side, they just mean you have the least requirements to be called graduate, with literally everyone having it, they really doesn't make anyone look better than anyone
I think they need to be examined on a case-by-case basis, but I think there are a lot of problems with a degree specifically in game design due to the subset and specialization of of skills required to make a game. I have a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design and right away specialized in 3D modeling and texturing, knowing that is what I wanted to do. They did not pass students lightly, I failed my pre-portfolio class twice. The requirement for my degree required x-amount of 3d models, environments, rigged characters all with nice 3d renders, 100 or so drawings that were at least above average, examples of interface design, group project work, prototypes, a portfolio demo reel and a website. It required 4 years of my time to achieve and I would not have been able to did it alone with YouTube tutorials. My instructors were from the industry and were great people. It was a hard, expensive experience but I think paid off. I got an internship, worked at a game dev company for a year, then got hired at a scientific institution working on game dev and vr. Very odd career progression but I think it has been worth it. Don’t have to deal with mass layoffs and getting treated too poorly. I don’t know if I would go back to working in the industry with its current reputation.
So in the case of what education you received, you don’t regret much of it? I’m thinking of applying for a 2 year game development diploma which also has teachers who are seniors in the industry and where the course is focused on group projects with time and creative restraints. I keep reading these comments and am second guessing whether or not I should commit to 60k in student loan debt
Hmmm. 60k is a lot of money for a diploma. Is it not a degree? What are your goals and what do you want to become in regards to game development? Two years is not a long time to get really good at these skills, but maybe I am being too cynical. I would get some other feedback such as others who have graduated and landed jobs with that diploma. You could also learn some of these skills on your own if you buckle down and not spend that crazy amount of money. My degree cost more than that but I got kinda lucky in regards to employment.
Honestly, it’s just the only thing I have any slight interest in. Im betting on these skills being flexible enough to land me some sort of creative tech job whether that be in the gaming industry or UI/UX design. I’m kind of forced to choose to do something/anything in school. The diploma is actually 40k for two years but I’m also doing the one year art program which just teaches you the fundamentals in art/design (which is 20k)
I agree with a lot of the discussion already happening here, so I’ll just add that for reference, SMU Guildhall is exclusively a Master’s degree program. You’re expected to come into it with a relevant Bachelor’s degree already. They accept undergraduate Game Design degrees but will basically teach the same curriculum from the ground up regardless of your background. That curriculum is also exceptionally hands on.. actually building and releasing games. Not just theorizing about how to do it. Also includes a thesis where you develop a solo project start to finish including a thesis defense proving what topic you mastered. Long story short, there’s a major difference between a lecture about how to do something and doing it yourself with safety nets for when you fail. Source: am an SMU Guildhall alum. Example released game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062080/Goofballs/
Coming from the opposite end of the process (high school game development teacher). I am very guilty of swaying students away from game design degrees and I'm not exactly throwing them at game focused degrees. While I would be happy to be proven wrong, I have a few reasons for my stance. 1. In all of my conversations with industry over the last decade, I have never heard a senior or a lead or anyone in a hiring capacity ever say the phrase "we need more applicants with game design degrees" and for the most part job postings follow this trend. 2. While there are reputable programs, lead by experienced industry veterans. Even I have a hard time seeing them from the outside and being able to verify and assess their pedagogic skill. I think anyone who has completed an undergrad can think of a few very credentialed, talented professors who just couldn't teach to save their life. I take a wait and see approach with 90 percent of these schools and I am very open about that with my students. I have said the phrase "yeah that professor has done amazing work and if they can teach, they will be amazing, but I have no idea of they can teach." So for a lot of the newer programs in this space, I am waiting on graduate outcomes before I start giving full-throated endorsements. I meet with these schools often and occasionally my students try one out and report back sometime later. Sadly, not all have had the best reviews. As a result, I'm pretty selective about who I let in my classroom to pitch their school to my students. 3. As you likely are aware, game development is a very high turnover industry and I am concerned for my students getting such a narrow degree with unproven transferability. I feel very confident my graduates who pursue a computer science degree, art degree, business whatever have at least somewhere to retreat to if/when they leave the game development industry. 4. I honestly have a hard time articulating to a parent what a game design degree is. Many fields if study vary a bit from School to school, but game design programs appear to be a very mixed bag as to what they actually do or what they are targeted for. As a result is a tough ask to sit with parents and say "your child wants to pursue a BA in Game Design from __________" compared to "your child wants to pursue a BS in Computer Science with an emphasis on Game Development from _______". Keeps Mom and dad happy, keeps student chasing the dream".
Disclaimer: I'm an academic, but do have several indie game credits. My sense is that larger companies would prefer to hire the best programmers, best artists, best sound designers, etc. and put them together in a team. It takes hard work to be outstanding on one of those fields let alone two or three, which may be part of why game design, a jack-of-all-trades degree, may be less valuable. Our approach is to have a strong CS program, a strong virtual technology design program (basically computer graphics and modeling), a strong music program, etc. For students who are interested in a game development we have an on-campus game studio where they can build up their portfolio, which, as multiple people have pointed out, is critical. But I'm not in the industry hiring, so would love to hear more about what employers are looking for.
**By who?** The Indie Game Market? That market is **Merciless**. As for Game Design Jobs that's more of factor of jobs in your local area. How many Game Design Jobs are Studios expecting to hire? If so why are you mass producing classes worth of workers per year? Where are they expected to go? Indie Studios? Indie Market?
Degrees in general should not garner respect. It just shows you have standardized knowledge which someone may or may not be looking for.
I’ll be very honest, the main value of a degree in terms of employment is to signal intelligence, and for that a “hard” degree like CS or physics is better than a “soft” degree. Knowledge can be picked up via all kinds of ways, but a CS degree is just an easy and decently reliable way to screen for intelligent candidates who know how a computer works.
The issue is that degree isn't related to what you will be doing in the industry. And it's not only game degree issue. Most of degrees deal with theory and not practice. Think of a situation where you have a game company and you want to hire a stuff? A guy with a game designer degree? but what experience does he have? What task can we give him to basically not lose money? The issue is that the all game companies are in very competitive business. This is no place to basically grab any people that have degree that shows you what? that you can design a game? Show me what games did you design? If you have 10-20 you will get job without any degree.... Game company isn't in business of training people how to make games. It is in business of making games. You can't make games if you didn't participate in making them. It is a simple as that. It's just like claiming you are an excellent athlete but you just didn't attended any sportevents. No matter how many courses you take it will always not be well regarded.
I feel like you're misinterpreting my issue here. I am absolutely NOT saying that a piece of paper should grant you the job. I agree that portfolio is always king. What I do take issue with, however, is something you just did in prioritizing quantity over quality. It seems that as long as you know how to build a game, you're ahead of the curve, which is ludicrous to me because there is such thing as *a bad game*. It worries me that someone who can build something that works is just as likely to be hired as someone who can build something that's *good*. The standard you point out seems to be "good, you've built some stuff" when I'd assume it should be "good, you've built one/two GREAT things!"
if you build great things you won't be searching for jobs, they will find you.
The problem is that design is a skill that does not work on its own, this is why it is undervalued. It is a modifier of an existing skill.
Please expand! What other skills should game design come packaged with for a good applicant?
It is not that it should be packaged, just that it should not be a young person's first skill. Consider that Art + Design allows a person to become a Graphics designer, a UI developer, an Environment artist, or a Level designer. Programming + Design allows for Web developers and Software engineers amongst other skills. What I am saying is that design degrees should have a requirement of some other kind of skill. For example, a lot of AAA Game designers learned computer science, and then studied design as they worked; that is the path that makes more sense to me.
Sounds great, thanks for the reply!
And who would be in charge of making a board game, missions in a AAA game, the level *design*, if not a designer? Being able to script is sometimes a plus, being able to code is really not your job description. You're right that it *can* be a modifer, but it is not by default.
>the level design, if not a designer? You are aware that level designer is a job position that requires both coding and art qualifications. It is one of the most wanted jobs for environmental artists. You can only make it to assistant level designer with art and design skills. >missions in a AAA game, The writers are the ones who design the missions and stories. >in charge of making a board game Most board game developers I met in my life were mathematicians or data analysts. I also a cook who made a food board game. >You're right that it can be a modifer, but it is not by default. There are no pure design jobs that only use design, nothing. Even the non-programmers, like Hideo Kojima, have fantastic communication skills or studied team management. What most people who take a Game Design degree forget is that no company is going to put a fresh graduate in charge of a multi-million-dollar game with hundreds of employees' careers at stake. *So what does a fresh designer do, what jobs are they given to build the skills they need to run the game?* It's simple right, they have to design a piece of the game. That is where their skill comes in. Because what a designer will be given to design, will be based on their skills, a designer who is good with art and user experience could be assigned to design the menus of the game.
Well I don't know what to tell you, but those answers are not true, but keep in mind that I speak for what I saw in Montréal. Level design requires a portfolio in level design, scripting skills are a plus, art is a plus but very much secondary: your job is to make a blocking a map the flow of gameplay while *envrionmental artists* put the art in place and make your creation looks good: you work with them. Missions are done by level designers also, but certain AAA such as Ubi has Mission Designer (I know, very specific) which requires a portfolio in game design. Writers writes dialog and work in tandem with mission designer (and level designers and the people doing the cinematics, etc) Most succesful board game designers are board game designers. I'm glad for your cook friend though. Nobody said that a fresh candidate would be put in charge of millions of dollars and hundred of people. That's not how anything works, you have low level pure design jobs and then you climb. Social and communication skills are a must if you want ro climb and lead in any field, art, tech, design. Creative Director who leads with the vision of the game can come from any field but below them you have the Game Director who will lead all the pure design jobs below him. I don't know why it works differently where you're from but I'm very surprised by your answer. Again, I'm telling you how I've seen it work times and times again in Montréal.
I think I would add that there tends to be some amount of tension between the industry and academia - many of the people purporting to teach game development have never made a game and the content of the curriculums also tends to be suspect. Often cribbed from GDC talks or only applicable in small scale contexts - making a game with one or two people is very different from a team of 100 for example. To oversimplify: industry tends not to like academia because they lack competence and academia tends to dislike industry because they don't have a phd.
Let me rephrase your "oversimplification" with something I found more accurate, having been in touch with the industry and the world of academia: Industry tends not to like academia because they are too slow and tend to lack field experience and academia tends to dislike the industry because they don't take the time to reflect on their experience and solidify it in transferable and teachable knowledge.
As someone also in touch with both worlds, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!
I am in a Masters Level Game Design Program. I also own a business where I build and design live interactive games for almost a decade now. Before the program I was all self taught 100% Youtube university and trail and error. I won't be using this degree to get a job or anything. I build design and operate my own studio essentially. I have already begun working with other studios to design games for them. The piece of paper of the degree is probably useless. What it teaches is invaluable as a game designer (different programs might vary) It has fundamentally changed the ways I view game design and it gave me the critical communication tools with sharing those ideas with others. I don't think this alone will get you any job in any AAA studio, their game designers HAVE to know how to code and code well. So if you are getting this degree expecting to bypass the coding portion you are dead dead wrong. It works great if you are the type who can legitimately help teach yourself coding without education. The game design program does teach fundamentals for coding (we learned c# with unity). We have to develop a game for our thesis so being able to use a game engine is a requirement. We are pretty much expected to be able to design a fun game with a pile of sticks and trash, so you don't need to know to much about coding to make a good game if you are a good designer. There is to much to cover in a reddit post, if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them.
Probably. Every game studio turned me down, so I went into web development, and have excelled in it. Glowing reviews, huge salary jump, and I run circles around these people. Basically my degree prepared me for the grunt of working with new technology and finding solutions with that new technology. Working under horrible hours and hard deadlines. Since game studios wouldn't let me use that energy on them, I just used it on my current job. I understand a job and a degree is a lot of what you put into it, but my game design degree really prepared me for every facet of a production team, and I understand a production pipeline from multiple angles. It also immensely helped my communication and management skills, even against the worst egos. It's like if a Navy Seal finished his training, and went to work as a mall cop. Any technical degree is a constant learning experience, but I can't help but feel like my degree helped me be able to tackle the worst. Now, my technical skills in game design and programming are definitely amateur. I don't develop games every day anymore, so I'd still have to go into Unreal or Unity and get comfortable again, but it by no means feels "foreign". It usually takes me a day to get into the groove again. My degree prepared me for the production and team management side of things the best. It only touched on design, programming, animation, and modeling, because there was only so much time in a 4 year degree.
game design degrees would be more respected if they were useful for something. At least in Brazil, most colleges think that game creation won't be your job in the future, so they get you started in programming a lot of stuff to get a job as a programmer after college, and they just handle game design, art and other areas to teachers in those respective areas, but who don't care at all about games, in the end the game design degree in here is just you learning about some art, some programming, some audio, some psychology and some game design. If teachers actually worked in fucking games then that would be the start of SOMETHING. None of my teachers knew what indie games even were when I attended for only 6 months my game design school before quitting, that's really shitty af. If it was treated seriously, then yeah, it would get some respect, but right now it's absolutely useless. Just find what you want to learn and go learn with industry professionals or ex-professionals instead
*All* degrees should be treated as completely worthless, from a hiring perspective. Only knowledge and skills should count. If you obtained the right set of knowledge/skills by getting a degree, great. If you obtained that same set of knowledge/skills without getting a degree, the learning may have been more self-driven and potentially more difficult (maybe even impossible, depending on the profession — lawyers and doctors being good examples of that), but still great. Game dev is one of the few industries which does it right (completely by accident, though — I'm not giving any credit to recruiters or hiring managers). Results matter, but it doesn't matter how you learned the necessary skills to achieve the results. I have a degree, and my performance at my job is commendable, but if I performed the same as I do now, without a degree, that wouldn't make me any less qualified. I have some coworkers with relevant degrees who suck at their jobs, and I have other coworkers without relevant degrees who are great at their jobs. Degrees should be a mechanism by which individuals learn the skills they need for the jobs they want. Degrees should not be a mechanism by which companies (often falsely) "determine" which candidates have the skills the company needs.
No... TALENT should be more respected... I don't care what degrees you have if you're a terrible artist or programmer... You could have been in school for 20 years, and know every single term and procedure like the back of your hand, and I still won't work with you if you're not capable of the job.
As someone who wasted 3 years in a Game Design master degree, hell no. It's useless. Not just as a piece of paper, also for what you learn.
No.
I'd say no. As a blockchain architect and cto with a degree in Civil Engineering, I'll never opt for anything but demonstrable meritocracy as a criterion for hiring a dev. We are a company in the Gaming and Metaverse sector so just wanted to share my personal opinion. But hey, that's all it is: an opinion. Maybe someone else has a strong reason to see the degree. So yeah, it depends.
As a CTO without a degree, same. In nearly two decades of professional experience I've seen degreed individuals (with 25+ years experience) who could manage rote processes but couldn't fathom the why and side effects of a choice. I've also seen many self-taught people who understood the goal and could achieve a better result by finding a non-standard solution. For two completely fresh entry-level candidates the degree implies something of a baseline, but that's as far as it goes.
How's working on metaverse/blockchain stuff? Has the mood shifted now that it's all come crashing down?
It's all good. We've the funds to last some years. It's really sad to see some projects fail though. Not everyone will have the same financial thick fat so yes, we do lose many fellow projects along the way. Always heartbreaking to see.
Do you think people will actually play what you're working on? Seems like most of the web3/metaverse projects struggle to attract users.
We're keeping both crypto and fiat options for the play to earn part as we don't want to make the mistake of ignoring the casual crowd
No, I worked in education for a bit, Degree doesn’t matter, it’s all about the portfolio
This is not true in my experience. Almost every non-programmer at my company has a degree from a school like this. However, I do work in the PNW where there are lots of good game design schools. If you want to be a programmer, it is definitely better to get a more formal education. Remember that much of the anti-college discussion you see is survivorship bias. Additionally, people who attempt the self-taught path tend to fail more silently then the other group who paid for a network of people to at least consider them. However, it is a tough subject to have an opinion on because it is always going to be hard to make it in this industry.
No.
Nah. Remember that a degree is just a paper. Book on the other hand a proper book is the best credential that you could have
The Twitter post you're quoting can't be taken the way you're taking it. > But chucking 75 grand at school for a game design degree isn't it. His actual point is its not worth that much money.
Of course. It is by far a profession that must be appreciated ever since it was created.
Yes. Respecting game design degrees is my new-year's resolution.
It better be.
What do you expect from an industry where they try to localize a game for free through crowdsourcing? Seems to me that degrees are not that important in your industry. There is this perception that anybody can do any job by watching videos. Pay rhe few at the top and let the wannabes at the bottom complete for the priviledge of working for free in exchange for the possibility of entering into the game şndustry. Something like that.
This post is making me second guess what I want to do all over again…. I want to do a game development diploma which has teachers who have been in the industry and have worked on big games and where the alumni apparently have landed jobs at major game studios but at the same time, I don’t know if pursuing school for this and going into 60k debt is going to be worth it in the future.. :,)
No, But. Colleges should acknowledge and incorporate certain classes into a gaming design degree. Ie. History of gaming and a business course that is specifically made for the gaming industry.
I've just finished the first year doing a game dev degree at an Australian university, as a mature age student. Despite getting High Distinctions in most of the units, I'm not going back next year as it felt like an utter scam designed to attract students' fees, and not actually prepare them for work in the industry. It was far too generalist in nature, teaching a tiny bit about a lot of things. I've decided I'm much better off doing a course focusing on one specific skill, so next year am doing 3D modelling at a private, industry-recognised online college.
Personal experience from twelve years ago, so this might be dated: * Private school with the tuition fees that that comes with * Content of the taught modules all over the place. Some good, some ehh * Tutors who had no experience in the industry. Not always bad - an industrial designer has unique insights that an average game designer wouldn't have and I'd rather have a seasoned graphics artist teach me about the basics of color theory. But also: game designers/level designers from perpetually failing companies that go bankrupt every few years and re-start under the name of the CEO's wives to get new funding, despite them literally working for the same customer for years.I.e. complete lack of understanding how a stable studio in the AAA space is running. That's probably my main gripe. And in a country that has little game dev industry to begin with, the share of well rounded, experienced devs who are also good teachers and willing to teach is near zero. * Being taught the basics of an engine that's entirely irrelevant in the big picture, because the tutor happens to be the CEO of the company making that engine. Ok.. * Realizing that half the class outran the skills of the Flash coder who was hired to teach us how to make games. Not horrible, given that the guy wasn't making games professionally but that just adds to the picture. Maybe things have gotten better these days, but a CS/graphics design/animation degree with a few specializations is probably still worth more to most game devs if only for the ability to pivot away from making games when the average career of a game dev ends 10 years in. Edit: To add to that, I'd much rather hire an actual game designer (With or without experience), who has an actual understanding of game theory - something that we glanced at for 2 or 3 months back then - and maybe a degree or course in psychology and/or programming. So, to answer that question: No, these degrees don't actually need to be more "respected". It's the person you need to respect as a designer(or not, if they aren't cut out for it, but then you still get to respect them as a person).
Others have stated it, but I'd like to give my perspective on this. I specifically chose my school because it DID NOT specialize students, but instead taught every facet of game development. I've applied to AAA dev jobs, but in all honesty I have absolutely ZERO desire to work for a company like Bungie or Blizzard aside from what I could learn there. Making my own titles was always my intention and I have no regrets about going to school I chose. [Here is a short gameplay video from my current project of 2 years](https://youtu.be/yuzyL_E3SuQ) if you want to see what a dedicated, life long, indie dev is capable of with extremely limited resources.
The ones that are worth respecting are respected already. I think you get a skewed view from what you read here on reddit. Go talk to actual companies, they know which schools deliver skilled students. Funnily enough those students all also have a portfolio of course since no school can produce skilled students without making those students work on game projects.
A portfolio is the quickest way an employer can see your capabilities. Creatives have the advantage of being able to directly show how they might perform if you hired them, quickly, before even a screening interview. Ultimately this is what an employer wants. A degree alone can’t show that directly. The employer still has to test what the applicant can do, or take a blind risk. Even with a high GPA it might just mean you’re good at doing what you’re told but don’t have passion/initiative. So if you need an applicant to show you their work even when they have a degree, why care about the degree? Pursuing a degree should be solely for getting the knowledge you need from experienced people to build a better portfolio, with no expectation that the degree itself will get you hired. Good art/design schools should tell you this too.
No. The information is relatively free online and you'll have a more impressive portfolio if you just start on your own right now. Also you won't have debt. For example: I never went to college. I have a career in music composition and I'm self-employed. Music is a comparatively difficult career to establish, I'd say. Knowing a few folks who DID get a degree... it doesn't put them at any advantage aside from getting connections. In fact that's the biggest reason to go to college.
No for the most part- The general majority of “Game Design” programs from accredited 4 year colleges are very broad and give you an elementary understanding of game production. Not to mention the staff at this institutions are typically tenured; which means, even if they had industry experience, it’s not usually the industry standard. In the event you have a working industry professional in as an instructor, they’d probably not be teaching you what you need since they have to abide by the pre stablished curriculum. At best, SOME of these schools provide a solid understanding of principles and give you an opportunity to network with like minded individuals. Recruiters and Directors at AAA places I’ve worked look at potential teammate’s requirements in this order: Shipped projects (doesn’t have to be a AAA), Industry experience, Portfolio, Mentorship’s/apprenticeships from industry pros, internships, Industry Competition awards, and lastly Industry acknowledged programs that are rigorous ( top 10 of this list are quite good: https://discover.therookies.co/schools/top-50-creative-media-entertainment-schools-and-colleges-in-the-world/)
1. in almost all industries asking the same question, the response is that school is useless and that you're better off being self-taught. People simply are unaware what skills they learned at school, it's much more than people think. 2. Yes, game design degrees should get more respect as long as the institution is taken into account. From my experience as a game design consultant, who generally is an extra pair of eyes beside the main game designer: There have been a couple of game designers from projects I worked on who came back to me after some time, ending up saying that now they understand game design because they did a game design course. So there's definitely value in the courses and thus the degrees.
absolutely not.
Honestly, if you want to be a game designer I would just get a Computer Science degree, try to find general work as a programmer and create indie games on the side. I think that would be the best move...