Computer science or game programming?

In my (limited) experience: computer science is a real degree that will be respected by both games and non-games companies, while game degrees are a joke. YMMV.

haha yeah i hear alot of ppl say that people look down on you if you major in game programming as oppose to computer science and the question i want to know is why?? if the only thing i want to learn is programming specifically for games.

haha yeah i hear alot of ppl say that people look down on you if you major in game programming as oppose to computer science and the question i want to know is why?? if the only thing i want to learn is programming specifically for games.

Many game programming courses miss a lot of the theory behind programming. They'll also sometimes just skip it all together, having you make games only using an engine like Unreal. Either way, it can work for a job at a higher level, like a level scripter. But you'll miss out on a lot of the information that a CS + EE course will teach about compilers, operating systems, assembly, embeded systems, parallel programming, etc. This means the game degree is often, by itself, useless for getting a job on an engine or tools team. And it is also useless for getting a job an any other computing field.

ahh good point i'd prefer to learn everything and know how everything works as oppose to just follow a certain theory.
I'm looking for schools in my area for computer science and the schools im qualified to go to only have programs like computer programming, is there a major difference between the 2?

A lot of people will say, perhaps rightly so, that a "pure" CS degree, or even a 4-year degree in a related technical field (mathematics, physics, CE, EE, etc) is the better degree -- certainly they are more versatile, and certainly they are more appealing on a resume in some cases. Like any industry, you will find certain organizations which prefer or poo-poo certain applications coming from grads of a certain school based solely on the perception, or past experiences, of previous applicants from said school. There are organizations which more-or-less blacklist, for example, Digipen grads, and there are also organizations that have had great experiences with Digipen grads, and snap them up readily. If I had to characterize the reception of, again, Digipen grads as an example, it opens some doors more widely, while closing some others -- while how widely doors are opened to graduates of university programs largely depends on the reputation of the school, and doors are almost never closed off entirely.

That said, not all "game-programming" degrees are worthless -- Any game-focussed degree offered by a traditional 4-year state school ought to be just as good as their standard CS program. Also, Digipen has a very serious program which, although the program sacrifices *some* breadth and *some* depth in tangentially-related subjects, gains a great deal of depth in hands-on game implementation, team work, planning and project-management skills, as well as having a shear amount of applied programming that most university programs don't touch. In my opinion, having been there myself (so *disclaimer*), Digipen is the only "game school" worth attending that is not affiliated with a 4-year university.

As a general rule, avoid any tech-school which runs ads during episodes of Jerry Springer (University of Phoenix, Devry, ITT, etc) -- many of which offer game development degrees amount to not much more than a high school diploma -- preparing grads for an exciting career in game testing and a lifetime of crushing debt. These programs exist only to exploit young adults desperate to get into what they perceive as a "party" industry, which, by the way, it is assuredly not -- as well as parents equally desperate to get little Timmy away from the XBox and give him some direction in life.


There's also FullSail, which straddles a sort of wierd middle-ground that exists beyond the tech-schools, but fails to achieve the theoretical soundness of even Digipen, let alone a University program. I can characterize them, mostly, as turning out game-industry footsoldiers -- ready to hit the ground running, but a long way from being leaders. I have real problems with their style of curriculum, and the fact that it's "accelerated" -- which is, as far as I can tell, merely a way to charge people 4 years worth of tuition, for 3 years time, to learn less than what I got in just 2 years at Digipen.


The bottom line, from my perspective, is that you should consider good 4-year universities, universities with gaming or media-focussed programs, and Digipen. None of the other gaming options are worthwhile, in my opinion.

I think that the most important is not to close too many doors behind you. If you choose game programming school, you will probably miss a lot of theory about programming etc., as already stated. In such a case you will not be able to work in other fields than game programming. And believe me, in most cases a job as a programmer in typical business company is:
- easier to find
- easier to progress when you're in
- better paid
- less stressfull (fe. crunch time is really smaller if not completely eliminated)

I don't want to say that such jobs are better in all aspects, but if you will not be able to find a job in a game company, wouldn't it be nice to have other options?

Game programming degrees just smell weird and unnecessary to me. Imagine taking "Library architecture" rather than an architecture degree, or "Stomach surgery" rather than medicine. Most people specialise later on, either in their choice of career or in further education.

I think any good CS course, with lots of independent learning and practical work* (focusing on games if you wish), is a superior solution.

* [size="1"]This is vital even outside games, if you want to become a good programmer

The bottom line, from my perspective, is that you should consider good 4-year universities, universities with gaming or media-focussed programs, and Digipen. None of the other gaming options are worthwhile, in my opinion.

I would have to agree with Ravyne.


In my opinion, your ability to learn about game programming and computer science related material is usually only hindered by your drive and motivation to excel.
Being in any university will provides you the guidance and direction, but ultimately, the rest is up to you.

However, the one one thing I feel that people don't bring up enough when asked the "game or regular university" question is what you can learn out of the classroom.
I would say that the greatest benefit to studying at a gaming focused course is NOT about the math, physics or CS material they teach - it is the experience of producing a game.
You would not likely get this opportunity at any other university and no structured course can ever teach you how to effectively and efficiently work in a team.
Learning the dynamics of performing in a game development team is invaluable and I feel it's essential skill to work in the industry.

I'm biased towards DigiPen because I'm currently a student there and the experience has been fantastic so far.
They teach you the lower level hardcore stuff and you don't have the liberty of using commercial or open source engines for any of your projects.

Plus, being able to find a group of other students who are as passionate about you as developing a game is amazing - which extremely difficult to do in other schools.

I majored in CS and kind of hated it.

If you want to learn to make games, teach yourself to make games. Don't rely on your college to teach you how. If you want to make games, make games.

haha yeah i hear alot of ppl say that people look down on you if you major in game programming as oppose to computer science and the question i want to know is why?? if the only thing i want to learn is programming specifically for games.

Err, this answer might be up there somewhere in a previous post but to do anything cutting edge in game programming you would need to have the CS knowledge first.

The bottom line, from my perspective, is that you should consider good 4-year universities, universities with gaming or media-focussed programs, and Digipen. None of the other gaming options are worthwhile, in my opinion.

I'd say the EA Interactive Entertainment Academy is pretty reputable:

http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/

as is Guildhall at SMU:

http://guildhall.smu.edu/

Sure are... those would fall under "universities with gaming or media-focussed programs" in accordance with my earlier post

Don't go to a game college, don't get a game programming degree, master in CS + going to one of these top ranked schools http://grad-schools....cience-rankings = 80% chance of a job. Also make sure you aren't a nerd. Be a person who is very social and works well with teams if you want a job. (I would choose stanford as a college btw if you can get in)

However, the one one thing I feel that people don't bring up enough when asked the "game or regular university" question is what you can learn out of the classroom.
I would say that the greatest benefit to studying at a gaming focused course is NOT about the math, physics or CS material they teach - it is the experience of producing a game.
You would not likely get this opportunity at any other university and no structured course can ever teach you how to effectively and efficiently work in a team.
Learning the dynamics of performing in a game development team is invaluable and I feel it's essential skill to work in the industry
[/quote]

No university degree, be it at a top uni or a gaming college, will teach you how to "effectively and efficiently work in a team", as well as "the dynamics of performing in game development team". That knowledge and skillset is only acquired through hands on experience in production environment. Uni projects can mimic that to a certain point, but they will never replace the real thing. So in my opinion, you shouldn't consider this argument as an advantage of game degrees. Plus - if it's really all about working on gaming projects, who is stopping you from attending a CS degree and making your team and individual projects based around games? That was exactly what I did and it worked for me.

As an ending note on my part, I will second some of my predecessors, repeating that CS degrees offer a wider range of options for your future career. It might sound like nothing you would be interested in, since you KNOW you want to make games and only games. That's cool, but what happens if the economy is shite, studios are shutting down more often than hiring or maybe you are not willing to relocate to a game dev heaven? You still have to pay the rent and probably eat something, so it's worth having an alternative career (even if it is only temporary) set up. You could actually use that to earn some extra funds to start your own studio? Finally, it's always beneficial to have a wider perspective of certain areas, especially in a field such as CS, which is constantly evolving.

Personally I've seen people with a formal education in CS sit in front of a videogame project and understand close to nothing and seen people with barely a highschool diploma pick things up quickly and naturally, the need for a high-rep CS degree in order to work on videogame development is as ficticious as the need for an art diploma in order to be a truly talented paintor, Paul McCartney went from "Love Me Do" to writing a full blown opera (which has been recognized to be more than just good) with almost no formal music education whatsoever, It's just an imposed social need in order to categorize people that have nothing to show for themselves.

For instance, many amateur modders ended up earning a place in the videogame industry without a CS or a VG specialized diploma, some very successfully and others in infamy.

The only important question is what drives you, if you get a CS diploma and work on traditional software and it turns out your real drive was to create innovative and entertaining videogames, you will be pretty miserable even if you are successful at it, and this applies the other way around as well. Remember that in the end, whatever you choose will steer the rest of your life, so choose what ever makes you happier, don't JUST think about money cause it wont make you happy (unless you are that kind of person in which case just go make a living in wall street ).

Videogame development is hard, stressful and usually underpaid and I enjoy it all the same, because for me there is nothing like the feeling of making a simple space shooter and seeing my cousin or friends or merely a couple of complete strangers go nuts about it.

I took a recently created (I live in Argentina and official education in videogames is very new here) videogame development course (not just centered in programming, but design, management and others as well) and the first time I put a rotating red polygon on a DirectX window I fell in love with the profession and almost peed myself from the emotion, so go look for that feeling, it's the only thing that really matters.

In regards to taking or not taking a uni degree (any degree, not limited to CS), Tom has a bit of advice: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson27.htm (see section 1, The Four Year College or University Degree) with which I wholeheartedly agree. You do get game dev wizards without any formal higher education, but it's not the majority and the formal university training gives you more than just whatever is taught on your course.

I believe a Computer Science degree will add more value than a game programming degree. Computer Science includes different domains of IT including software development, programming, hardware networking. A game programming degree is limited in itself. A Computer Science graduate has a wide range of career options including game programming. I suggest you to enroll for a Computer Science Bachelor Degree program which will help you acquire skills for a wide range of roles in the computer field. Remember, a degree can help you acquire relevant skills but its you who should be dedicated and motivated enough to apply these skills in the real world.

"Personally I've seen people with a formal education in CS sit in front of a videogame project and understand close to nothing and seen people with barely a highschool diploma pick things up quickly and naturally,"

Those people are exceptions.

In the general case, people with CompSci or related degrees make better software engs. Hence, since they are recruiting for the general case, companies apply filters to the floods of incoming CVs. And the first is "a relevant degree".

I've been at companies where they don't do this. At one, we used to advertise in the local paper. All the engineers got put on rota answering the calls. The phone rang night-and-day with people who thought they might be good at computers and wanted a job as an SoftEng. It's a great job; it's indoor work, pays well and doesn't involve touching blood, wee or other people. It appears to have no difficult entry level -- it's just typing, after all, right? Brrr.

I've worked for a bank which hired people off the streets as well. Hired random people, handed them "learn C++ in 21 days" and test them 21 days later. If they pass a basic C++ test, congratulations, you're a "grade 1 programmer". Fail the test and congratulations, you're an "assistant project manager". Fear the quality of THAT software.

I've worked for a place which did financially critical systems using custom hardware. Oooh, and made a point of hiring non-compscis for at least 50% of the engineering staff. Wow. That was scary. When you're in a 'meeting' about some lump of code and more than half the people present answer questions about things like "possible race hazards" with things like "don't both me with that university wordy crap, this'll work"[1]...


Having done this a lot, worked in a lot of places, banged my head against a LOT of brick walls generally I'd say that the companies which don't apply those filters are insane. And lo, it turns out that sane companies do do this filtering. All sane companies do that filtering[2]. Remember, they don't need to find the 1 exceptional person. They just need to find one person who can do the job. Yeah, they'll never interview Leonardo Da Vinci. But then Leonardo won't ever get a job either. Oh, and bluntly speak, chances are that the exceptional people have degrees as well. Because... well... them degrees is easy if you is actually smart.

So go get a degree. Everyone's special, I know you all are too. You're all too smart to need one. But just go get one because it doesn't half make applying for jobs easier.


[1] It didn't. When it turn out to be fraudable we paid a couple of million in compensation. Never mind eh? Better luck next time.

[2] Not all companies which filter on "relevant degree" are sane tho.

As with everything, it all comes down to the school. In my city, the CS degrees were laughably awful and most local employers knew this and favoured hiring from the local colleges instead, so in the end people paid a whole lot of money for an outdated education and low job prospects. Meanwhile just down the road, at the time anyways, a degree from the local University would get you head hunted by the likes of Microsoft, Google and just about everybody else ( U of Waterloo if anyone cares ). The quality of the program really is a large factor.

Now as to getting a degree in "Game Programming", you sure are closing a lot of doors! If I was hiring for say e-commerce and I saw that you had a Game Programming degree, you would be quite obviously an employee not doing what he wanted to do, it would be an instant strike against you. While on the inverse, if I was hiring for a game company, I would put very little stock in your degree over that of a CS student ( from a good school! ).

Yet then, if you have no desire whatsoever to do anything but game programming, sure... go for it. Just no you are slamming a hell of a lot of doors! If you do go for it, my earlier advice holds true... the quality and reputation of school means more than the type of school! If you can, shoot an email off to a couple HR departments at game companies you would like to work for and ask what schools they recommend. I would just say stay the hell away from the TV schools like ITT and Devry. I have heard mixed things about Full Sail, Art Institute, etc.. so as I said, asking the people doing the hiring is probably your best bet.