Hello, i am currently accepted in a university with 4-year bachelor degree in “Applied Mathemathics and Informatics”.I have the option to move to “Computer and Software Engineering” and the questions i have is:
1.Which one will be more helpful if i want to get into game development?Or to put it in other words if a clone of me finished one degree and i finished the other, which one of us will be more prepared for game development?
2.Why?
Thanks in advance to everyone helping me decide and i’m sorry if this is the wrong place posting this.
Between the two named courses, the latter is almost certainly the better option - the former degree isn’t relevant unless you want to specifically do something like analyse game economies.
Also consider what you want to do, Computer Software Engineering will only help you if you want to do programming. Find out what job in game development you like best and see if there’s a degree that focuses on that. Don’t waste your time unless it’s primarily focused on what you want to learn.
I learned more from a c++ teaching app on my phone than I did in computer science programming courses at my university. Others have said the curriculum and ways of teaching coding at traditional colleges is not good compared to the paces you can set and how fast you can learn from “out of the box” thinkers that design improved course material online. Not to mention all the non programming logic and material/tests about hardware you will be stressed to pass all the time which dont even apply to game design with those degrees…
Maybe save your money and if you really need to- get a 2 year vocational degree in a guaranteed faster income field that you can work sort of part time and still earn a decent income… then have enough time learning game design way faster on your own online!
Well my primary interests are - programming, AI and level desing. Im looking for a fundamental all around degree like CS, but since the university doesn’t have that i have to chose between these two (which by all means aren’t bad at all).And the second degree is “Computer Engineering and Software Engineering” to avoid confusion.
I agree but i don’t have a choice, i have to chose one. Also alot of people keep saying that a solid CS degree is better choice than alot of the Game Dev/Desing degrees out there. Anyway i too learned programming on my own and everything else online and i think its better that way, but i need the structure a university gives me.
It’s insane, but I still, after over a decade in the IT industry, see job adverts asking for candidates with a certain result in a computer-related degree.
I think a degree si always great because it will help you with future jobs. if you work int he game industry for a year or two and absolutely loathe it you will have a degree to fall back on. a lot of people want to see that paper and won’t talk to you unless you have it.
Well it’s not that I don’t believe him, I genuinely want to know because I am interested in learning C++. I myself am a strong advocate of self-learning, I recently dropped out of high-school because I wasn’t learning anything that I didn’t already know, and didn’t feel the challenge. I have learned far more in the past 3 months on my own than I have in the past 2 years in high-school.
A degree doesn’t necessarily matter, and for games it matters more that you know how to do the specific job you’re going to do. So if you want to develop UE4 games as a programmer you need to be really good at C++, and spending time learning other stuff will waste time that you could spend becoming better at C++
On the art side, they teach you a little bit of everything and you become good at nothing.
To those of you without a degree or other educational achievements, there are things more important than those.
Experience trumps all. Once you build up your CV, that will get you into job interviews.
If you don’t have experience, you need to get yourself a portfolio. If you are art-based, show off what you can do online, whether it is in Maya, or pencil.
If you are a programmer, you need to get yourself a GitHub account.
Yes, there will always be employers who want to go the old fashioned route, but most, in my experience, will be interested in a person that show they are passionate about this sort of thing, by actually doing it in their spare time.
Experience is most useful but the competition is very rough, so every bit adds to your final score. If you have awesome abilities and next to you is a other candidate that is awesome too but has a degree he might have more points in the match. I do not think that doing a degree is a waste, it is though if you only invest time into the degree and not some extra stuff. As Jezcentral said: get quality stuff done and get noticed.
1 & 2.
An industry like this is more what have you done, than what you can potentially do.
They like someone who has experience in whatever more than a degree.
However, a degree will definitely help you more in most aspects of life and college is a wonderful experience.
What will help you is practise in your chosen field.
If I had to pick one, computer science for starters. It teaches you programming basics.
Video games basically live off of two things, if-else conditionals, and loops.
The most generally useful degree would probably be any CS degree. For whatever you do though, your degree will only be what you make of it. If you want to do game dev, use the resources you have in school to actually make stuff. You won’t have those resources again for a long time. The internet can be great, but having someone who can look over your shoulder and show you exactly what to do or draw diagrams for you or whatever. You also get access to tons of cheap software and tons of professional development opportunities and ****.
Personally I’d go with a CS degree just because of the whole “a programmer can make an ugly game, but an artist can only make a pretty picture” thing. Really at the end of the day as long as you’re actually doing stuff anything is fine.
