[game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction - Sheri Rubin)

[Miller, Gary]

Our accreditation is contingent on maintaining a 70% placement rate but
I do not know how that is measured. If you email Coble, Rob
rcoble at fullsail.com he might be able to give you some stats and point
you to the measures.  I teach Operating Systems and Machine Architecture
II in our Game Development program but we do have a Game Design Program
and a Masters in Game Development which I do not know much about. 

-----Original Message-----
From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of Dan Carreker
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 5:54 PM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction - Sheri Rubin)

Baylor,
 
I think you have some great points here.
 
USC has a 49% placement rate?  (making sure I understand you correctly)
Does anyone have any other data on placement rates? I'm giving a talk
soon on how to choose a game design school and I'm sure this question
will come up.
 
 

Dan Carreker
www.NarrativeDesigns.com
"If I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. 
 I'd type a little faster."  - Asimov


	----- Original Message ----- 
	From: baylor wetzel <mailto:baylorw at gmail.com>  
	To: amenezes at imagecampus.com.ar ; IGDA Game Education Listserv
<mailto:game_edu at igda.org>  
	Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 2:45 PM
	Subject: Re: [game_edu] Introduction - Sheri Rubin

	>In the end, we are training future customers for these
	> companies and it would be wiser to consider us as
	> partners, not customers, don't you thnk?
	
	i realize i'm going to seem like a tremendous jerk, but i'm not
sure that it is a real partnership. Probably the top issue our school is
facing is placement - most of our students just aren't getting jobs with
game companies. This situation is true for most of the game schools i
know of (USC's GamePipe, based in LA next to 49% of all North American
game jobs, being the big exception). i don't think my school has a lot
of leverage with game companies and although i wish they'd give us
licenses for old games, snippets of source code, free (or cheap) copies
of Unreal 2007, etc., i honestly don't see any reason why they should
	
	It's also worth noting that publishers aren't developers and
developers are often very, very small and frequently go out of business,
so setting up a relationship with most is fairly difficult. Many of the
people they hire aren't people with game degrees, they're friends and
talented people (probably without a degree) who send in a fantastic
portfolio. Maybe they should hire someone different (although there's a
good argument that they shouldn't), but they don't. So what's their
incentive to take the (not insubstantial) time to manage relationships
with game schools, especially given how many have popped up in the last
few years (the growth in the number of game schools has been truly
dizzying)?
	
	We use cheap tools (Flash, Torque, the level editor in Unreal
2004) and not very cheap educational versions of tools such as Photoshop
and 3DSMax. If we want to show them "classic" games, we show them movies
and screenshots of them (asking a student to invest 40 hours per game to
find those classic bits like the bathroom scene in Deus Ex or the low
int dialog option in Fallout is fairly unrealistic) or, to study
concepts, we make our clones. As much as we wish we could get Mudbox, a
motion capture system, the source code to Half-Life and unlimited free
copies of Monkey Island, we'd be happy with just the game companies
showing up at our career fair
	
	-baylor
	
	

	
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