This is the coda of a series named Gaming Education at College that focuses on the teaching of gaming above the high school level. At this part, I’ll answer some common questions/complaints about the college method of teaching gaming.
1. Why don’t I create a (true) full game (each semester)?
The basic answer is that you won’t get paid to do this in the industry. You will be asked to be part of a team. It takes many people and years to make a great game. In a semester, good luck. The only full games you’ll make will be simple games. Unfortunately, full simple games don’t always teach college level theory.
2. My teacher doesn’t have a full background in gaming?
Sometimes I feel this is aimed at me. I fell into gaming through the Serious Games route, running and programming finite element codes and graphics packages. I never got to work on my “Fortnite.” So, I used to feel a little embarrassed when my students heard that I never worked for Bethesda or some other cool game company like that.
However, one of my strengths is that I possess is a wide breadth of knowledge. At a community college that is needed because in the spring semester I teach artificial intelligence, C++, Animate, some basic drawing, a modern 3D game engine like Unity, 3DS Max, OOP, computational geometry, game physics, game design, storyboarding, scripting, etc. I’m not trying to show off here. I can’t do even one of the aforementioned near the level of someone in industry. On the other hand, I would think that industry pros would have a hard time teaching all of the above.
At smaller schools especially, teachers have to be flexible. They can’t be only into 3DS Max or Maya (as an example), because that might only result in a couple classes a semester at best. Industry people from big companies tend to be so specialized that they have to learn much before they can teach a full 15 credit or more load. Smaller companies employees may be more varied but usually have a niche that they fill, like being 2D only.
I hope I’m not sounding arrogant here. Most of these people in industry are more valuable to their bosses than I am to mine. It is just to become a teacher in this wide field, you have to have a wide background or learn much on the fly. I had to neglect a few areas in order to strengthen my others.
Therefore the reason some teachers don’t have a full background is that they are often called to do more than one discipline. Moreover, and the unfortunate part of my job, we never get very far in the development of the individual. We have to teach many rudimentary lessons that they can expand upon in their projects. I would say that more than 25% of my time is spent on teaching GUI’s and debugging. It would be great to go deep into game maing but those opportunities aren’t as prevalent as you think.
NEXT: Question #3: Why don’t I get a job when I get out? Should I be fully qualified at the end of my schooling?
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