LAST: Industry Standards

This is part of a series of same titled blogs that focus on the teaching of gaming above the high school level. As a professor who taught (and sometimes still teaches) gaming, I’ll share my perspective on the pros and cons. I’m going to try to go in depth on what to expect and what we shouldn’t. I also will answer common questions by students and prospective companies who wish to hire. I teach at community colleges in the United States, so my experience may differ from other parts of the world. Take my opinion for what it is: the most authoritative. No, just kidding, but I wouldn’t mind hearing any opinions for or against my own.

With the state of gaming being said, it is evident that you just can’t place a novice into a position. There needs to be someone who will train people to make games, and have the people who they train be competent before the first job interview. Due to high schools being run/heavily controlled by the government (yes, even the private ones), there will probably be no time in the near future that they will be the leaders in training. To be honest, most high school students are too immature and novice to understand the tricky concepts of gaming. They can make a game and have great ideas, but don’t understand how to build a great game in entirety. This is not a criticism of high school students; it’s just the nature of the beast. When I was in high school I loved video games and had many ideas about making them. I would have been mediocre (at best) at actually applying my ideas.

Trade and Tech schools have dabbled in gaming, but you rarely hear about much success from them. Being an instructor at various colleges, I hear many college teachers complain about non-collegiate, post-high school education. I’m not one of the complainers, but my colleagues have valid points. The trade schools usually cater to people who will pay tuition, in such a way that they don’t always present the most rigorous or useful courses. (As a community college teacher, I have heard this about my schools’ type of education as well.) This could change as the industry needs more specific skills in many cases. Trade and Tech schools could feed certain type of applicants into gaming. It will be interesting to see.

That makes the current front runner colleges and universities. To be honest, perhaps that is where it should be. The video game industry needs talented individuals. As an example, I’ve met many gaming programmers over the years, and it is apparent that these people could code anything. You would never say that a game programmer couldn’t hack it in another programming field. These people, as a group, are as impressive as any I know.

To take game making serious, you need to have well educated people feeding into the process. Sure, there are some who do it without a formal education just like there have been artists who never went to college. There are two things to entertain here. One, education never stole talent away from anyone. If you could make it without an education, you can certainly make it with an education. Second, I have a B.S. in Physics. I don’t know of any Physicist from the last 200 years who ever discovered any worthwhile theory without a college degree. Some fields you can be productive without a degree, others it is impossible.

NEXT: Why College (II) ?

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