Mind you , I still have about two years to decide but I like to worry about things early.
So I eventually want to get a job programming games but I not exactly sure if I would be able to get a job doing this, so I want to be able to fall back if I cant get a job in video game programming and just get a job making regular programs. So my question is would it be better to get a degree in Computer Science or Video Game Design? Would video game company’s look down at me for not having a degree in video game design?
They would look down at you if you DO have a game design degree instead of Computer Science.
These game related schools are absolutely a new market and most game companies don’t care about these degrees.
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They would look down at you if you DO have a game design degree instead of Computer Science.
These game related schools are absolutely a new market and most game companies don’t care about these degrees.
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Thanks for the answer! Well then, I guess I have a pretty easy choice now.
I’d take a look at either Computer Science, or better, Software Engineering. Game Design degrees are often not worth the paper they are printed on, and if you cannot find a job in games, or want to leave the industry for any reason, you may find you’re not even qualified to do anything else.
hmm… i’ll look into Software Engineering.
I would also assume that having a working game out on the market would help your chances of being hired, correct?
From what i have seen both courses (Computer Science, Video Game Design) are poorly taught in the majority of institutions, teaching only very basic skills. Although I am sure if you look hard enough there are some really great institutions out there that offer a solid comprehensive course.
If you are looking to get into the more technical side of games development or computer programming I would strongly recommend you take a course in Electronics or at the very lest physics or mathematics. Electronics would be the best options as you will learn a lot about programming, mathematics and physics which are essential to any technical computer related job be it games development, general computer programming, or even computer/network administration. Without these core skills you will find towards to middle of your career you hit a technical brick wall and will have to go back and learn these skills so you can take things to the next level. Plus you will be able to build robots.
As for just general programming you can learn so much online right now just following online tutorials and talking to other people on forums/IRC/stackoverflow.com seriously you can become a very good programming just reading books and reading online tutorials right now. Learning C# today would be a great starting point for you and will almost certainly guarantee you a place at university in a few years. That is what i did.
Start here today, you will have your first program working by the end of the day.
Download Visual : https://www.visualstudio.com/
Watch these video: C# Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners | Microsoft Learn
Read these tutorials: Getting Started with Visual C# and Visual Basic | Microsoft Learn
Feel free to drop me a pm if you are serious and want to get into this stuff, all i ask in return is you do the same for the next person you come across.
[=jmosher65;240195]
I would also assume that having a working game out on the market would help your chances of being hired, correct?
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You don’t even need to release it. Just finish some small good games 
I did it this way and I can’t complain about lack of positive responses when sending out CVs.
I imagine if I had something one market it would be even better.
EDIT: I would also say Computer Science is better choice then Game Design. You can learn there some useful stuff (ex. computer architecture) which is needed while working on bigger games, but it’s going to be generic knowledge. In your free time make game related stuff.
Ahh, ok thanks for the info! Also kudos on the GIF, made me laugh a little
[=franktech;240293]
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Computer Science used to be a golden career. But I’d steer clear entirely of CS unless you have a specialty that’s going to be bullet proof for the foreseeable future (always a difficult call to make). The last decade has been all about Ad-Slinging. But the next will probably be about privacy, cyber security / cyber warfare etc. The sheer number of corporations and governments who’ve been hacked has grown exponentially: Sony obviously, but Anthem / Home Depot / Target / JP Morgan… The list goes on and on, and that was just last year. There is a case being made that many of the intrusions were is no small part due to outsourcing and the marginalization of long-time staff (insights from RBS meltdown). You can get a general idea of worker disgruntlement by reading comments in tech journals from theregister.co.uk to sites like Glassdoor etc.
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The average tech job in the UK and USA can be a god-awful thankless job. Sorry, not to mince words here, but I feel the other comments don’t reflect the harsh reality of being a present day tech grunt. Hours have skyrocketed, pay has stagnated, all the while the bar of expectation has hit the roof, with ever more security and multi-vendor cross-platform BYOD challenges. In short, the sheer amount of information you need to function in this job today is huge.
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Sure, you could join a start-up that hits the big time, but that’s like winning the lottery, and analysts are always warning about frothing in the IPO market. You could also work on Wall Street building trading systems, if you can find a way in. Or you could seek out lucrative Expat gigs (with low or zero taxes) if you’re willing to travel to places like UAE / Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bermuda etc. You could also start your own start-up, if you have the next killer sharing-economy idea. There’s lots of support in many places like the EU & US to help you do just that…
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But if I was faced with your choice, I’d go and study video games, and do something fun. You’ll be learning C+ or C# and HTML5 and networking at a minimum, which is crucial to any tech career. But only go the college route, if the institution in question has a proven track record of building games and has industry ties to help with job placement. Otherwise take the self-study path. The sheer number of available online tutorials beats any university in the world.
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What about afterwards? If gaming is looking a bit frothy i.e. the democratisation of video game engines, closing of studios, has meant that the market has become flooded, then go back and do a masters in Cyber-Security or Financial-Derivatives and seek out Expat gigs so you can travel the world…
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Either way, I would spend the next two years building games / prototypes to find out: Do I like this area, do I have ability?
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Thanks for the info! I already know that most tech jobs are pretty bad but for now like you suggested i’m just going to spend the next two years figuring out if I like the area and if I have the skills to be in the area.
Check your school options, not all of the schools are worth the degree they offer, and just having the degree doesn’t matter if you didn’t learn enough from it. That’s the first thing you need to do, make sure that they will teach you what you want to know.
Realize though, it’s possible to learn on your own, but you need to plan it out, and you need to build your skills.
Hummm as a perspective I’ve never wrote a line of code in my life but at the moment I’m about half way through writing my own player animation system from scratch using blueprints so since you have two years to decided and then the expected 4 years to graduate how things are done now will be obsolete or even made redundant.
As far as skills goes top of my list would be software savvy and in games and 3d in general understanding the language so to speak would be of more value than knowing everything there is to know.
As my choice thought I would go with video game design but I’m old school and learned my craft years ago modding games back as far as Doom, Quake, Quake 3. UT1> and I bet that if you took a poll over at Epic I’m willing to bet a dozen Timmy Horton’s donut holes they got there via way of the mod route as there was no “game” design school back then.
Really can’t go wrong with the design route as people don’t play with code but with content. 
‘Game Design’ degrees are worthless - do no waste your money on one. Nobody in the industry looks for them, nobody cares if you have one, and they’re basically just money-making schemes for universities.
A CS degree is much better simply due to the fact that it broadens the amount of industries you can work in straight from college. Getting a job in games is hard. Like, really hard. Most of the available jobs are looking for experienced people and there’s a lot of turn-over resulting in a lot of competition for them. If you don’t manage to land an internship quickly, prepare to do other work for a couple years until you do. At least with a CS degree there are decent options outside of the games industry - a Game Design degree could very well hurt you when trying to look for other jobs.
The best designers come from other disciplines anyhow - they better understand the limitations of the tech and/or the time required to build whatever they’re dreaming up. Either go for engineering or art, then transition into design after you have some experience.
I’m biased in that I work for a University that offers games degrees. But the whole “computer science or games programming” debate annoys me. Because we TEACH COMPUTER SCIENCE in our games programming degree. In fact, here’s the ridiculousness of it all, one event I was at in Brighton (south of England) a guy from EA says “We would only employ people from top universities with a computer science degree” which was funny to me as we had a bunch of students already working for that exact same company (we’re not whats called a “red brick” university, which is who he was referring to).
The industry is run by such smucks.
The reality, is that people care more about what you can do for them, than they do about where those skills come from. So you have to demonstrate you are good, no matter which course you take. The degrees I teach on all favour practical game development skills and focus on portfolio items rather than doing abstract exercises.
My best advice is to do your homework. Find the destinations for leavers of your chosen course. Speak to people who’ve done it, people who are on it etc.
Oh and don’t expect a course to make you less lazy if you’re willing to work, a good course will help you get a great portfolio together, but if you’re not willing and won’t put in the effort for a course, its unlikely that game development is a job for you.
Computer science, my computer science course is game heavy any way so its a win win
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The industry is run by such smucks.
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Awesome attitude. We love you too.
To be clear, the OP was discussing an engineering degree versus a ‘game design’ degree - not ‘game programming’ vs computer science. Apples and oranges. If you have a specialized degree in graphics programming (from any school) and a kick-*** portfolio of course you’ll be considered for the relevant job. It’s going to be a lot harder for you to apply your skills outside of the games industry, but it’s possible.
Most large studios have a hard requirement of a CS ‘or equivalent’ degree in order to apply for engineering jobs - and if you don’t, your resume won’t even make it past the first round of eliminations.
Game design degrees are scams. Its just a money making thing to market all these new fancy sounding degrees, no employer takes it seriously.
I am doing a Degree in Computer Engineering with a major in Software Engineering. Everything from Computer Science is taught here and you also do a lot of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
[=Chambered;241304]
Awesome attitude. We love you too.
To be clear, the OP was discussing an engineering degree versus a ‘game design’ degree - not ‘game programming’ vs computer science. Apples and oranges. If you have a specialized degree in graphics programming (from any school) and a kick-*** portfolio of course you’ll be considered for the relevant job. It’s going to be a lot harder for you to apply your skills outside of the games industry, but it’s possible.
Most large studios have a hard requirement of a CS ‘or equivalent’ degree in order to apply for engineering jobs - and if you don’t, your resume won’t even make it past the first round of eliminations.
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No, seriously, this guy was a schmuck (there were other reasons not worth going into). Unfortunately there’s plenty of em (look at any large publisher and tell me half the managers aren’t idiots).
I took exception because somehow he thought that computer science being taught in the context of games was somehow inferior to computer science being taught in the context of any other discipline. Which honestly unless you’re doing a really top grade CS course simply isn’t true. We have our games programming course because computer science courses around 10 years ago were essentially dead at anything but the top flight Universities (which honestly doesn’t matter what they teach and they wouldn’t necessarily update with leading edge content anyway, as they have guaranteed student numbers).
Interestingly enough from my experience my students don’t have much trouble applying for jobs outside the games industry if that’s what they want to do. Those that are solid programmers can pretty much guarantee themselves a job if they work hard enough. Which I guess is my point. Course doesn’t really REALLY matter. You can study something that might interest you (which is why I think there’s value in studying game development at the right Universities) whilst also gaining useful skills.
I’m the first to say though, that its always down to the person studying to get the most out of their own education. Whichever course of study you take, its still down to your own effort.
Hey - As someone with a degree in computing science I may be slightly biased. However, one of my best friends that I grew up with has a degree in computer games development, that he got at the same university. So I can still try to offer you a good comparison.
First, I will open with the fact that my friend finished his degree and went to work in a stock exchange (along side me, which was a coincidence) - So all in all, our degrees didn’t make a massive amount of difference to what we could and couldn’t be given jobs for.
The degree itself is much the same as the computing science degree, it shares alot of modules, and in various cases, they will even share a class. That said, the models which are not shared, will also often be pretty much the same topic, but in a different context.
The truth is, Both of these degrees are useful in the real world, and neither will really typecast you into a certain type of role after university, not when it comes to companies that matter, because everyone worth working for knows that game dev is hard, often harder than its big brother, Computing science.
What matters is the road you take after university. I studied computing science, and would love a career in game dev, which is why I am working on an indie project, to change the context of my resume. My friend, however, studied game development, and now never wishes to leave the software industry.
That said, I am speaking in the context of someone who grew up in Ireland, where roles in software are in abundance, and the talent to work on these projects is scarce (everyone moved to Australia about 3 years ago! The place is empty!) 
For this reason, maybe employers here don’t care which degree it is as long as you have one, and maybe your country is different.
My personal thoughts are that it doesn’t really matter - but you should do computing science because then you can be part of the arrogant computing science master race who look down on everyone else. In software, and game dev alike, that will aid you, regardless!
[=WalkingDead;241314]
Game design degrees are scams. Its just a money making thing to market all these new fancy sounding degrees, no employer takes it seriously.
I am doing a Degree in Computer Engineering with a major in Software Engineering. Everything from Computer Science is taught here and you also do a lot of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
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You’ve done one I take it?
Or is that just the party line quoted from the rest of the industry?
Seriously, I take your point that there are plenty of horrible game design degrees out there. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good quality ones which actually offer a lot of quality skills. I’d advise anyone thinking of doing a game design degree to do their homework about the course, student outcomes etc.
Plenty of our game design grads (we do game design, game programming and game art at the University where I teach) go out and get jobs in the industry. We focus on having a quality portfolio, practical design skills, communication etc. Everything the industry tells us to do. I’m sure there are plenty of other places that do NOT do that.
But lets be clear. A game design degree is for DESIGN, so comparing it to software engineering isn’t right. Compare our game programming degree to software engineering by all means.
I can only speak for the UK here, but I know of a number of high quality courses for game design, game programming and game art. But they are probably a very small number compared to the whole offering. Plenty of Universities offering bad courses with the name “game” in the title for sure. But guess what? computer science and software engineering courses can be bad too! Why would you choose a bad course just because its got a title over a good course because you have some prejudice against the course name? It makes little sense to me.
Again, my advice is to do your homework. Education is an important choice in life.