[game_edu] question from the community

[Jim Parker]

Interesting

As one who taught Computer Science fot 26 years, and created the game 
programming course and concentration in my department, I found that CS 
was a discouraging and negative place to try and work on games. I 
finally gave up and moved to the drama and art departments.

There are many ways they were negative, in the face of evidence that 
they were mistaken, but the most telling statement was from a theory of 
computation person who said that offering courses on games 'sent the 
wrong message'. Not sure what that message was, but perhaps it was 
'computer science can be fun and interesting'.

My opinion is that it very strongly depends on the school and the 
department, and a CS degree is not always (or even often) the best 
route. When putting the course together, it became clear that the 
programmers on a game development team had the least creative 
contribution, often limited to statements like 'we can't draw that many 
polygons per second'.

Nowadays the tools available have reduced the need for programming quite 
a bit. When I started this work in 1999 there were about 6-7 programmers 
on a team of 10 on a development group. Now its more like 2-3. The game 
engines and physics packages have really helped, and now we can say ' I 
want to do this' and not have to express it in code all of the time. The 
tools can do it, and the programmers can easily link those into the game.

In that sense game development has become much more democratic. Creative 
people can now create prototypes even, and that is quite helpful in 
demoing mechanics. My art students can now build games in weeks that 
used to be a whole semester in CS.

Encouragement comes in many forms - mine would be that you don't have to 
be a computer science major to develop games, and it's not even an 
advantage in many cases. The Nike rule 'Just Do it' would be my offering 
to them. Build a portfolio, work with programmers and artists and 
designers, and take a degree in a creative subject. Get a masters would 
be good advice.

Jim