Difficulty on deciding on a suitable qualification

Of all of your qualifications/degrees I only know what the Bachelor's is.

Of all of your qualifications/degrees I only know what the Bachelor's is.

Thanks for replying so soon. Well, that was my reasoning, that the Bachelor of Science would be the most recognised of the two qualifications. Looking further down the road, I will have the opportunity to top-up to an Honours at a later date.

What kind of job are you trying to get?

You don't need any kind of degree to get a good job in the game industry- you just need to know your stuff and find a way to prove it (self taught or university educated, it makes no difference). More important is politics (and sometimes formal education can give you a leg up there).

I think you should go for whatever you'll learn the most in. After I completed my studies last year (BSc hons. computer science after doing a BIS multimedia degree), I went for lots of interviews... at a wide range of places: insurance firms, banks, design companies, and the big four consulting firms. Honestly I dunno WTF I was doing there but I just went with it...

Err ok. Point is, they didn't seem to care what I had studied. I would have hated most of those jobs. But the more creative companies (design etc) wanted more of a portfolio, so I put one together of games and design work I had also done. So it depends on what type of job you want to do, but really... go for where you will learn the most. Even if your qualification doesn't sound too fancy, if you have some real work to show for yourself it will go a long way!

Although I'm not sure what you'd want to do with assembly? In the end it depends on what you want to do. You'll go a long way with some initiative, go for it!

Thanks for the replies and all your interest. Its good to hear other voices on the matter.

As for what kind of job...well, just a garden-variety programmer I guess! Of course, that's a bit vague as you get different kinds of programming, but thinking about it I would like to work in a small studio producing 2D retro games. I have written games before but they are in need of updating as the code is riddled with bugs - not to mention awful code. Dune 2000(played it to death since 1998!) is having issues after so many years and OSs that I'm thinking of writing a clone in Visual Basic or Java, just to carry on playing the game...

Learning Assembly is a curiosity for me because of my time growing up in the 80s, playing games on a ZX Spectrum. How on earth did they manage using Assembly? From the C64 stuff I've done so far, it seems a miracle! I'm a little bit worried that not knowing any Assembly might be a big disadvantage when it comes to the "professional arena".

I think for now I am better off getting the Degree and wrapping up my education early, so I can return to my own projects much sooner. Whilst I have appreciated my university education for the software development side, I now feel the courses are a distraction from what I would like to be doing: making games. If its my work that is more important then I guess any extra effort on my education will be a waste of time and money.

Thank you all kindly for replying!

Steve.

I'm a little bit worried that not knowing any Assembly might be a big disadvantage when it comes to the "professional arena".

Almost nobody in games uses Assembly; the trend is towards higher and higher level programming languages, and even to scripting. Commercially, computers are so fast that differences of efficiency of even an order of magnitude are even inconsequential.

If your game gets 30 FPS, no matter how messy your code is (and even buggy, with any number of hacks to try to work around the bugs rather than fixing them), or if it's all just script and interpreted language, that's good enough for it to sell.

Professional game development is about getting a project done and shipped as cheaply as possible (and that's the case for software development in general), so it will achieve high profit margins. Like politics and sausage making, it's hard to look at it the same way after you've seen how things get done sometimes.

Aside from work on low level drivers and hardware, it's not very relevant today.

You could just lean javascript and Unity, and become a game programmer as long as you have a reputation for working hard and getting things done quickly. Most importantly, be willing to learn a new engine or programming language you've never heard of before at the drop of a dime, and enjoy bug fixing. Most companies do not make or use their own engines (although many do have some existing internal technology), but things can certainly change over night.

Assembly wouldn't hurt you, and it might open you up to thinking about things in a new way, but it's far from necessary. Just be ready and willing to learn, and have a good portfolio to show that you're dedicated.

I'm a little bit worried that not knowing any Assembly might be a big disadvantage when it comes to the "professional arena".[/quote]

Absolutely not! This may be the case if you were interested in very low-level coding, but I think it's sensible to say that using assembly for simple games is overkill to a massive degree! Assembly is really something of a niche skill these days. If you want to decompile game .exe files and crack them would be ONE use for it though!

Although I totally understand your interest though - assembly is like a dark art, and I do have some level of admiration for the "assembly cultists" who do any extended amount of it!

And I totally agree with what you're saying - education is great but it's even better if you can know when to stop to pursue what you really want to do. Seems to me that it's only once you do your own work outside of a university context that you can truly follow your dreams.

Aye, that all makes sense to me. I'll be better off just focusing on the modern languages and getting back into the habit of writing programs/games.

The advice is really appreciated and thanks for giving up your time to reply. Cheers guys!

Steve.