Thread: Game programming courses

Anyone of you know universities in us or uk that teaches game programming as a course for undergraduate students?? Any of you have any recommend universities? I've already done googling. But i still wanna know more opinions.

US: In my opinion, the only one's with any pull are Full Sail and Digipen. Last I checked, courses at MIT or Carnegie Mellon were more simulation or animation courses. That may have changed though.

UK: no clue

From what I hear you shouldn't go to Digipen because the teachers there don't really teach you so you're pretty much left on your own. FullSail seems pretty cool.

If you want to go to Digipen yo umay want to look into their summer courses and see how yo ulike them. It costs $845 for a 2 week course and you sitll have to pay for a way up there and for a place to stay, but if you've got the money it could be helpful.

I agree with EvBlade. if you go specifically for game programming courses you are closing many doors. You may want to do that now but that could change with time. I still remember a time when i planned on spending every cent i made on candy.

I talked to Full Sail and now they keep calling and e-mailing me. Unfortunately I just cannot foot the ~50K tab for the 2 year program.

I agree with Perspective which in chain reaction makes me agree with EvBladeRunnervE

Even if you really enjoy make games on your free time, the industry is completely different. There are some good places to work in game development, but I've heard more horror stories about it than happy ones. That goes for software development in general.

I don't know you, and I really don't know what your interests are (besides the face you're posting on a c programming message board), but if you are interested in computers, take CS. If you like math, I'd take math as a minor with CS, take math a major, blah blah blah. I'm taking math as a major, which should enable me jobs in just about everything I'm interested in. There are more uses to a math degree than just teaching, contrary to belief

I also checked on Full Sail but I found too many inconsistant statements between what they say and what my research showed (Example they say they offer a BS in CompSci for the game development course but their accreditting agency only had them listed as AS). Also after to talking to some faulty at my school and at another college it became a good possibility that their BS degree would not be accepted by a graduate school.

You aren't able to attend their AS courses anymore. I'm about to finish up the AS course in a couple of months, and then possibly go on to finish off with the BS stuff. It is expensive; so far all my tuition has been from a loan of some sort. Some would say that since it's less than 2 years, it's not that much worse than a traditional college. However, you cannot hold a job if you go here. It's not that they won't allow you, it's just that you won't get anything accomplished. Many a time I have stayed up for ~40 hours straight and did nothing but code for that time. But that's how the business is.

As far as going on to other colleges, you don't build up credits here that could carry on to other schools. If I wanted to go get a CS degree, it would pretty much be as if I were coming out of highschool. The only reason for that is that this is not a liberal arts college, and you don't have all that extra stuff (foreign language, history, etc). But I assure you, I wouldn't even have to show up to a CS class. Relating to what Thantos said, I'm not sure if the BS degree is different, but I can ask around and see if that is going to change.

The game design course has about a 25% completion rate. Out of the original 70 something guys that were in my original class, only 11 are still in my class. I don't know if the others failed completely, but chances are they did/will.

The administration people are like leeches. Once you feign any sort of interest, they latch onto you and don't let go. They'll say "you should put down your money now and avoid the tuition increase." Which is true, if you want to go. It also seems very commercial, which had me think twice about coming here, but all the teachers are extremely experienced and the material is great. One of my teachers was Dave Arneson, the father of D&D...he wouldn't play with me =(.

You could go through a 4 year CS course at a traditional college, then work in the industry for several years, and be in about the same spot as a Full Sail grad who has had a job for a little less time. In my opinion, it depends less on what school you went to, and more on your own skill/ambition. Carmack commented on video game schools, and he said if he were to start over, he would do nothing but read books and learn on his own.

The bottom line: There's no sure way. Decide which direction would best suit you.