I would recommend some kind of after high school education. Trying to get into the professional world with only a HS Diploma is very difficult( unless you know someone ). I think college is a complete waste( aside from the partying aspect ) and would recommend a technical college that supplies strictly programming, not english, history, economics, and all that other non-computer related crap.
3. STUPID IMPATIENCE
A lotta guys don't want to bother going to college and getting a four-year degree, they want to jump into the industry RIGHT NOW while the iron is hot. America is a nation of immediate gratification junkies - we think we gotta have what we want right now, without having to work and wait for it. Well, that's just dumb. Anything good (like a job in game design) is worth working towards, and waiting for. Anything good don't come easy. Besides, if you jump right in and apply for a tester job or mailroom job or gopher job without going to college first, you're just hampering your chances for advancement. See "stupid under-preparedness," #8 below, for more about this.
8. STUPID UNDER-PREPAREDNESS
No four-year college degree. No portfolio. No demo disc. No accomplishments to point to. Whatever this wannabe hasn't done, he has an excuse.
"There was no game school near me." "My parents couldn't afford a game school."
"I read where all the colleges were starting to teach about games, so I wanted to jump into the industry before all the grads started sending in their applications."
If you want to work in games, you have to prepare. You need a solid educational underpinning - if you want to program games, get a programming degree. If you want to make game graphics, get a graphic degree. If you want to design games, study writing, psychology, history, and earth sciences so you know how worlds work, and prepare yourself by other means as well. See Lesson 3 and Lesson 4. If you want to be a game designer, you have to have some skills and talents that are valuable to a game company so they'll want to hire you - either as a programmer, artist, project coordinator, marketer, whatever. First you have to get hired at a game company - nobody just hires neophytes and gives them the title "game designer" right off the bat.
Once you've gotten your degree, you still haven't prepared enough. A lot of people are climbing all over each other to get those game biz jobs.
If you want to get into a game company's graphics department, you need a great portfolio and/or demo reel. And I mean GREAT. When somebody opens your portfolio or watches your demo reel, their jaw should drop and/or their socks should pop off. It's stupid to walk into an art job interview without a portfolio or demo reel, or with a bad portfolio or demo reel. It's not easy to make a great portfolio or demo reel, but what have I said elsewhere in this lesson about "easy"? Anyway?
If you want to get into a game company's programming department, you probably ought to have a demo disc and you definitely need to have some sample code. They need to see that you can create solid code - they need to see what your code looks like because on a game project, the team members have to be able to read each others' code. It would be stupid to show up for a programming interview without good clean readable sample code.
Now exceptions do not disprove rules, yet rules are obeyed or broken, and in every situation it is possible to become a game designer with no college-degree. But you are just completly out of it if you think it can 100% happen to you. I don't think you should ask yourself if college is important, its a no brainer. What you should be asking is four-year or specialized (Full Sail, Digipen). Or Computer Sci Degree or "Game Design" degree.10. STUPID WHINING
America is largely a nation of "victims." Nothing is ever "my" fault - it's always somebody ELSE's fault. Or "I couldn't get into college because my skin is green," or "I couldn't get into games because I'm from Iceland," or "The game industry is run by a bunch of idiots who couldn't see how the Rastafarian ideology is the solution to all their problems."
Life is like a card game (or as I prefer to couch this analogy, mah-jongg, but that's just me). There are circumstances beyond our control, and there are choices we make on our own. In cards, you are dealt some random cards - you have no control over what cards you are dealt - that's just luck (either bad, good, or in between). As you play the game, you pick in more cards - again, you have no control over what cards you pick in - that's all luck. And as you play the game, you discard some cards - this is where you exert control, where your strategy and skill and creativity come into play. You also put on a "poker face" while playing, or at least you should. But I'm straying off the analogy. Building a career in the game biz is a lot like that too.
In the beginning, the cards you're dealt are the life circumstances of your childhood - you have no control over who your parents are and what they do for a living, and how much money they have to help you with your advanced education. But as you play the game, you can exert some control over the situation - you help pick the college you'll attend, and you are the one who works hard to get good grades (or flunks out from laziness or poor attitude). And after college, the game biz is in whatever condition it's in (maybe Zcube is beating Ysphere in the market, or maybe there's a war on and the stock market crashes, or maybe a glut of college grads has made the job market extremely competitive), and that is out of your control, but how you act, the choices you make, determine your chances of succeeding within that environment.
I kinda rambled on a bit there. The point is that whining is for losers. If you wanna be a winner, don't put a lot of energy into whining about things outside your control. Take control of your life, and be creative in your approach to the world. See Lesson 3 for more about Whining VS Winning.
This is exactly the problem with computer programmers. I would rather hire an average programmer with a good understanding of Modelling & Simulation protocols than an expert programmer who has no clue about M&S protocols.RapchikProgrammer wrote:...and i think studying anything is simply a waste of time except the field you want to be a professional in...
So are you saying a programmer who understands the technical aspects of 3D rendering? As in knowing buffers, how they work, etc. how the rendering pipeline transforms 3d data into 2d images, etc. Might not know how to model or texturize, but does know how models are made, and how texture mapping is done? Or you would rather have a programmer who can actually model? i.e. one who could open up 3DS Max or Maya and make you an average looking object, then import that and experiment with their average programming?Spintz wrote:This is exactly the problem with computer programmers. I would rather hire an average programmer with a good understanding of Modelling & Simulation protocols than an expert programmer who has no clue about M&S protocols.RapchikProgrammer wrote:...and i think studying anything is simply a waste of time except the field you want to be a professional in...
I would estimate that I do programming about 15-25% of my time, at times going months without doing ANY programming.
Depending on what that other "anything" is in my opinion. A programmer studying ... pfff ... theology (random). Waste of time? If he/she is looking to become a full-time programmer, yes. But what if he/she is working on a game dealing with ancient gods and demons? That waste of time has made them a very suitable candidate for lead game designer. But I think it is very important for programmers to minor or duel major in related fields such as Math, Physics, etc. Or have a degree with "a concentration in" math, ai, game development, etc. I don't think it is a waste of time to study new things which interest you.RapchikProgrammer wrote:Event hough i still have 1.5 years to go before going into college and i think studying anything is simply a waste of time except the field you want to be a professional in but i still think college is important cause without it u can ruin your life very easily!
aslong as all your posts dont end up lookin like dis then yur ok cause its annoyin when people do this and say "oh who cares about typing" just like "oh who cares about the way i speak durin an interview yo."monkeycracks wrote:Well I didn't necessarily mean I wanted to be hired as a game programmer(though it'd be nice), I was just curious about how much employers leaned on college degrees and such. It's not that I'm impatient (as zeno's post refers to), I don't think 5 years of programming is unprepared, and lastly I won't be whining if I get adequate information (the reason I asked this).
@Sprintz, Great post, thanks
I think I'll lean more towards 3d math and programming as networking confuses me sometimes (I'm somewhat new to it, but I'm learning fast).
And I know I used a lot of comma splices in that post, I'm too worn out for grammar today though.
Depends a lot on the company. It is not a requirement, you can get many jobs as programmer without college. But it will help sometimes, especially when applying for higher paid jobs. And it usually will never hurt to have a college education.monkeycracks wrote:I know it would help you to get the job probably if you went to college but it it required?
I'd say education is about the only thing that's really worth spending money on.monkeycracks wrote: Main reason for asking is college isn't cheap and I need to know if its worth spending the money on it or not.
.