[game_edu] "Identifying a Good Game School"

[Roberts, Scott]

Congrats and thanks to Ian Schreiber and Lewis Pulsipher for this excellent article in the Game Career Guide about choosing a school for game development.
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/838/identifying_a_good_game_.php
It's comprehensive and will be a real help to many potential students (I hope).

The only point in the article that disagree with is the section about teaching, particularly these lines:

"Ideally, almost all classes will be taught by full time instructors.

"Schools more and more are going to the "cheap labor" model of instruction, using graduate assistants and adjunct faculty, both far less expensive than full-time teachers."
Not all adjuncts are the same, and the presence of working professional adjuncts can be a strong positive, not a negative.  While not every professional is a good teacher, I think that adjuncts who are working game developers are invaluable to a program.  It's very difficult for full-time faculty to keep up on the rapidly changing processes and technology used in game development, not to mention highly specialized areas such as motion capture and rigging.  It has (almost) nothing to do with economics.  While we'd love to hire more of our adjuncts as full-time, the reality is that most of them are happy making games full-time, and teaching on the side ("I've still got a couple of games left in me...")  A balance of full-time and working adjuncts can result in a stronger program, in my opinion.

The question you suggest asking, "Are the teachers good teachers?", isn't necessarily connected to whether someone is an adjunct.  Adjuncts can be great teachers.

That said, I apologize for pulling out that one point of disagreement in a long article that I really like and will recommend to high school students!  You've done a great job.

Scott

Scott Roberts
Associate Professor
School of Cinema & Interactive Media
DePaul University
SRoberts at CIM.DePaul.edu

http://GameDev.DePaul.edu/<http://gamedev.depaul.edu/>


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