Want To Make Video Games?

Invader Zim writes "Looks like Levelord, of Ritual fame, and some folks at id, and Ensemble Studios have teamed together with Southern Methodist University to create a new school for people that want to work in the video games industry. It's called the Guildhall. Also a story about it at GameTutorials."

Thank God!

[SoVi3t]

Hopefully, this will be a blessing for overcrowded Computer Sciences classes. I remember when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was make video games. Alas, most of university/college courses cover other things, such as business utilities, or math problems. While this does help programming skills, it isn't hands on experience in the field of choice for most students.

my school

[zephc]

has added game development (BS degree), though I am doing the straight SE track.

cogswell.edu [cogswell.edu] for those interested

Attracting the best of the best

[karmawarrior]

It remains a key feature of IT that the skills involved allow entry to such a wide range of differing industries that there's practically no reason for someone to feel they're at a dead end. The video game industry, is in many ways, a case in point: although not wonderful - the salaries are generally so bad it makes analyst programming look positively well paid - it's a great entry point for any programmer with imagination who wants to use programming skills that are normally cut off at other levels. Database management is well known, dynamic web page building is understood and there are limits to what you can do: but video game development is different - algorithms are always being bettered, and the very good can end up pushing video game development into another sphere, creating types of application previously unenvisagable.

It's ironic that this happens and yet it's considered a poor-man's profession. Programmers in this field are generally poorly treated, with poor contracts, little chance of advancement, and little cross-skillification that would allow a programmer to move into a more respected arena. This is, in part, because it's an entertainment area, and in part because for every superskilled programmer who is able to push the arena into a new paradigm, there must be a hundred who can barely put together a bunch of assembler instructions to copy memory from one place to another without it taking five times as long as it ought to, and containing bugs.

This quagmire of the more innovative area of programming being hampered by a low perception of the people involved and the skills they bring to the table will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them you value programmers who have the imagination and skills to create entirely new technologies for the manipulation of complex graphics, and who have the cut needed to understand the essentials of good game play. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to create wonderful new games but that if good programmers are put off by poor working conditions and salaries, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how poor working conditions detering the best of the best harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on elite computer game programmers.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

Re:Southern Methodist???

[lpret]

SMU is in no way a christian university. It's purely a name so they can drag money out of people. This CNN article [cnn.com] about a Meth lab they found in their music building should be enough motivation.

You know it's a good college when...

[guido1]

The tuition rates are rounded to the nearest thousand, and the first semester fee's include:
" Tuition for the first term includes a fully loaded computer specially configured for digital game development."

http://guildhall.smu.edu/Admissions/tuition.htm

After further review, it appears that this is _quarterly_ rates. (6 term, 18 month program.)

Sociology, folkdancing, and now this

[Anonymous Coward]

It boggles the mind. They're not even pretending to educate any more. It's right out in the open.

I'm sure we all recognize the kind of student this will attract: Those unbathed, ill-groomed term-room troglodytes we knew in college, who gave out the terminal room phone number as their own and slowly, lumpishly flunked out.

Some of them stayed on anyway, parasitizing an institution that was no longer willing to tolerate their presence.

Now I guess we won't be flunking them out any more, we'll be giving them A's in "Self-Justification of Incompetence", "Advanced Parasitism", and "Stinking Like a Corpse". I can see it now -- Southern Methodist University will attract every drug-addled adolescent imbecile in the United States to this "program". Academic standards, already lowerd beyond all human tolerance, will sink beyond all nadirs previously imagined.

They're trying to produce a generation of young Americans so dismally uneducated that they'll fall for any idiotic junk-science and pseudo-philosophy that comes down the pike. A nation of perfect suckers to do as their told, a nation of drones incapable of thinking critically. The "recycling" industry will take off like a rocket (I'll be investing tomorrow, believe me) because these sad excuses for "college graduates" will be incapable of finding out where the "recycling" trucks actually go with the trash that the suckers have carefully sorted through (like bag ladies in their own homes, or slaves assigned as punishment to the garbage heap). Where do those trucks go, you ask? The dump, same as the other trucks. It's just obedience-training. The liberals always do what they're told, because they haven't the imagination or strength of will to create their own freedom.

I'm sorry if I'm ranting here, but I'm watching my nation get flushed down the toilet at the taxpayer's expense, and it's a bit hard to take.

I say it is a good idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets those harcore gamers out of the CS Classes so the CS Students can learn real CS without the gamers getting all fustrated because they are not learning how to make graphics. At least in my school the Wana be Game Programers were very closed minded indivuals who went into near panic when they were forced to be taught an algorithm that is not nessarly good for games. Concepts like Code creation time and updateability made them very fustrated and started complaining how big buisness is controlling the world. And you gotta love the mythos that they have thinking that being a game developer they are going to make a ton of money.
By putting them in a school that teaches them vidio games only get them to well specialized in one field and makes more job openings for generalized programers.

I want to make the world a better place. Sucking out kids mind with vidio games is not how.

Re:Thank God!

[phyrestang]

I think that the computer classes in general are overcrowded with students trying to "hit it big" in the computer industry. Unfortunately a lot of them are just going to end up clogging the job market because although they may have the degree, they lack the experience and more imporantly the innate computer aptitude that "real" computer geeks have. Like the parent said, hopefully this should act to relieve some of the mad rush to get a CS degree. (Although it still won't resolve the problem with all the "paper tigers" running around)

Re:Whoa they want you to have Experience already?

[Dave_B93]

Once you've reached that point, what's the point of going to school for it? By then you should know a few good websites, and be able to follow a tutorial yourself.

It's a logical progression that after you've written a few games yourself, you'd join a free game project or start your own. Then you're on your way. If you've already done some college (like they're requiring) then you should know how to lay out a project correctly.

I suppose you'd get some industry contacts, a skookum computer, and some friends doing the same thing as you. You'd also have the free time to actually concentrate on your gaming skills (instead of having some pesky job in the way). And okay, you get a nice certificate..

Okay, it sounds like it might actually be useful..

The problem is...

[kakos]

That these schools produce no-talent programmers who know how to slap down a template for a 3D engine, but don't know much else. Most students I've met that have come out of these schools know little of basic algorithms and data structures, such as binary trees, let alone more complex computing topics such as encryption, compression, etc. I mourn the loss of the gaming industry if these things start becoming popular.

Re:math

[andr0meda]

you know.. I wanter to rate it +1, the truth, but it's not listed so here's my tale:

Get as much math and physics down as you can, because if ANYTHING matters, it's that. These days everybody can fire up a direct9 wiz to create 'a game', spinning some polygons and acting on some input, but networking, math, physics, and platform experience are the things that count.. and you can only dream to get the last one if you can conveince people with the first ones..

Of course, a healthy appetite for working, clean, fast, interesting, pretty, funny and playfull code should not miss the list, but the main thing is to get as much understanding of all things math and physics, because basicly it's your ticket into the metal. Once you're there, you're 'in'.

Re:Good idea

[cbuskirk]

That is light compared to the Sony of America TRC (Technical Requirements Sheet I think) I had to do everyting from restart the PS2 100 times to unplug and re-plug the controllers 100 times. My favorite was testing a racing game. I had to run in to every wall in the game at differents speeds to see if I could pass though them. When i was just about done I accidentally hit one in reverse and went straight through. Had to repeat each test backwards for every track. Oh well, at least I wasn't working on the fishing game or like some of my friends at another company Britiny Spears Dance Fever.

Check out this gaming industry "horror story"

[Anonymous Coward]

Scroll down to "An Insider's Report" at the bottom:

http://www.bunnyears.net/tattoo

A good read...