Community College or Game Development?

Don't quit college to do a game.
The game market is crowded and marketing can be as big an issue as the game development itself! That's assuming your game manages to look okahy and be fun and accessible etc... i.e. Don't count on the game being a success or being popular. Also, your best chance at getting into working in the industry will be having a portfolio of projects AND graduating college.

wouldn't it be easier to get into this industry with a 100% completed project rather than any kind of degree?

How about both?

wouldn't it be easier to get into this industry with a 100% completed project rather than any kind of degree?

Nope. In fact it might be harder.

Stay in school, finish your degree. Work on projects on the side. Most of the people you'll be competing with in the job market once you graduate will have done that. They will have interesting hobby projects and a degree. So to stay on par with them, all other things being equal, you'll probably want that degree.

Naturally there are exceptions, and it it's certainly possible to get a job in the industry without any sort of relevant degree. Are you willing to make that gamble? There are probably things that will be taught in your degree program that will be hugely useful to your future career, things you don't currently know about, and which you probably don't even know you don't know about. By cutting yourself off from that experience you risk weakening yourself, both as a candidate on paper and as an actual developer doing work on a game.

Finish college and get a degree. Of course I have no idea what you're studying, so maybe the issue is you're not that into whatever that is and need to change it up. But, a college degree will look better on your resume and will help you more throughout your life than a "completed" iOS game. There's plenty of crappy iOS games out there, so that in itself means nothing. Also, you havent completed anything yet. If you cant complete college then what makes you think you'll complete a game project that anyone would care about?

Thanks for all the replies. Really cleared things up for me. I guess I just thought that since all of the most popular start ups CEOs never finished college that it would be unnecessary for me either, but then again, those guys are few and far between. I'll just suck it up and take the debt that a degree earns me. lol

wouldn't it be easier to get into this industry with a 100% completed project rather than any kind of degree?

How about both?

And make that multiple completed projects... nothing shows that you are able to not only complete projects, but complete them on time and repeat the success than having not only one completed project (that might have taken you forever to complete), but multiple of them.

Not finishing your degree and trying to bootstrap your own business is like to stop working when you buy a lottery ticket.

Of course it could work out well... but the chance is incredibly small.

Better to quit the job when you are certain you have hit the jackpot. I am sure most of the "CEO's without a degree" did the same. Most probably they didn't just quit school and then started thinking about what they could do instead... they quit school when they already had a thing going on and where quite certain that it would turn out well.

Thanks for all the replies. Really cleared things up for me. I guess I just thought that since all of the most popular start ups CEOs never finished college that it would be unnecessary for me either, but then again, those guys are few and far between. I'll just suck it up and take the debt that a degree earns me. lol

A lot of those CEO's also came from rich families who had something to fallback on if their company failed.

I don't know what your game is, but two months for your first(?) game isn't very long to fully flesh it out. Unless it is something niche and hits that perfect storm like Flappy Bird or Crossy Roads it will just drown in the sea of crap in the app stores. If you want to try and swing your game as some kind of employment helper it needs to be fairly good. Everybody and their dog has a game on the app store now.

Stay in school and finish the degree. Pretty easy to pay off student loans once you get a job.

I'll just suck it up and take the debt that a degree earns me. lol

Shop around and go for the less expensive degree. lol

Thanks for all the replies. Really cleared things up for me. I guess I just thought that since all of the most popular start ups CEOs never finished college that it would be unnecessary for me either, but then again, those guys are few and far between. I'll just suck it up and take the debt that a degree earns me. lol

Yeah, that is less than 1%. Always have a backup plan, finish your degree.

I guess I just thought that since all of the most popular start ups CEOs never finished college

Really! I never realized that there are no "most popular startup CEOs" who finished college. None! Really!

the most popular start ups CEOs never finished college

There are some notable ones.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are probably the most famous.

Both of them were accepted at Harvard, which by itself is a big thing. When they got to Harvard they looked around, observed what their peers were learning, observed what their teachers were teaching, and discovered that on their own initiative they had already learned the things that the most advanced students at one of the world's most prestigious universities were learning.

Individuals like this exist, but they are rare. While it is possible that you are among those individuals, the probability is extremely low. If you were one of those people, the best and brightest of the world, you would know that you were and would not need to ask.

If you can go to Harvard, take an honest review of all the research and teaching that takes place, and discover that there is nothing the school can teach you to your benefit, you are a rare person indeed.

Setting aside the clear advice to stay in school, I think the honest way to ask the question you've started to ask, "Is school the right path for me?" is to make the distinction between whether school is an inconvenience to your current circumstances or whether it really is holding you back in the grand scheme. Honestly answering that question is the difference between making an impulsive reaction and a rational response.

In many of the high-profile cases you read about, you wouldn't call those people anything less than prodigious. They already had learned, or demonstrated the ability to learn on their own, everything their plans hinged upon -- hence the value of continuing their formal education right then and there was low. Combine that with a reality where moving on those plans immediately (for competitive or opportunity reasons) was necessary for success -- hence the opportunity cost of staying in formal education was very high -- and you can see how they rationally came to their own decisions. And still they could have failed had any single thing simply not aligned. Microsoft would not be what it is today if Gates' and Co. had not been able to secure the software that became DOS, or if they had failed to license it to IBM for the Personal Computer -- even the fact that it was licensed-to rather than sold outright to IBM was crucial to the Microsoft you know today. Facebook's success hinged largely on being in the right place at the right time, as early social-networking-ish things (livejournal, myspace) began to fall out of favor, and created a base so large that no new social network--to include some real juggernauts--has posed a real threat since; had it launched too early or too late, it could have ended up in the dustbin or as a too-late also-ran itself.

Even (or perhaps especially) if your indie game is really great, its unlikely that whether it launches this fall or two years from now will make a difference to its success -- or certainly not in any way you can quantify and capitalize on. If time-to-market is a significant factor, it would imply that your game lacks a certain uniqueness and is closely derivative of others, hence the competitive landscape it will face now or in the future will not be significantly different. If it is unique (and good), then time to market is not a significant concern because its value is derived from its enduringly-unique qualities, hence the competitive landscape will be no different in that case, either. Sure, its possible someone might independently develop and release something close to your idea, its happened and it will happen again, but that's the business equivalent of a rogue wave and there's no planning for that.

I read recently that there are now something like 1000--yes, one-thousand--games released on iOS and Android every day, and so every day just a few gems ride a wave of crap and only a couple might truly stand-out. Whichever category you find yourself in won't be significantly different in months or in years. All the other factors are essentially left to chance. You can only really control content and quality, and rushing usually doesn't help there. Note, though, that time to market is not a synonym for timing -- timing your release and marketing push is certainly crucial and is something you can and should reason about, but for a small player at least, has little if anything to do with whether you release this year or next, or the year after that.

There are some notable ones.

You forgot the founder of Epic Games :D

Here is a list with some more:

http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/09/05/0522_no_college_ceos/1.htm

Ahh what the hell here is an even bigger list:

http://www.collegedropoutshalloffame.com/

Have fun with the reading and remember that failure is the mother to success :P

First off, an introduction!

Hello everyone! I've stumbled onto this site recently and decided to join so I'm completely new to this community. :)

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to get an idea of what you guys think think of the current situation I find myself in. First off, I want to make games. I've always wanted to make games ever since i was a child. I'm currently 19 and am going to Community College, working a part time job, and developing a game I plan to release on IOS and Android this summer. I've been developing this game whenever I can find the time for the past 2 months and I believe it has a lot of potential. As much as want to keep developing and spending more time on this project, I feel like my education is holding me back. So that leaves me to my big question...

Should I leave College after this semester to work on my project full time?

I know education is important but wouldn't it be easier to get into this industry with a 100% completed project rather than any kind of degree? This semester in itself has been tough just because I try to make time for my game rather then studying and my grades show that. I've been thinking about this for awhile now and I would definitely appreciate some advice from people currently in the industry. :P

Education doesn't hold you back, a lack of education does.

Use your passion for game development to fuel your studies. Got a boring math class? Figure out how you can use the math material being taught in game development. Got an english class with lots of writing? Figure out how that can help you write better stories and narratives for your games. Got a team project? Use this as training to learn how to work with and communicate with other people -- that is also a skill which gets used every day in game dev. I guarantee when you start taking this approach to education, trying to relate the material you're learning to the material you're passionate about, you'll get passionate about the material you're learning.

Also, don't be an idiot. Your priority should be school and studies first, game development second. Study hard and master the material you're being taught. Don't just try to pass a final test and do a brain dump afterwards, try to add the learning to your list of skills. Think of it like leveling up skills in an RPG -- max out those XP gains! Would you rather be a level 10 game developer or a level 2 game developer? Stay in school. Work hard. Stay focused. Work hard. stay motivated. work hard. Keep at it. You'll get there.

Well, what degree have you enrolled in? Computing? Hair dressing? Tiddly winks? Shaving?

If its a degree that has you doing some programming, maths and software develpment then 100% it will be worth it. If its something completely unrelated and - quite frankly - useless towards the goal of developing software then you need to switch to a more relevent degree.

In the end, its a decision that only you can make. Some swear by having a degree, is a right to a job or that "the paper" is for wiping their bum clean. I took mine out of fear of the future and peer pressure, but in the end, I felt it was both a personal accomplishment I am proud of and yet it was also holding me back from allowing me to focus on exactly what I wanted to do. Did I get a job out of it? No, but it did teach me how become a better programmer, and it allowed me to become part of the field in some small way - helping other students when the chips were down, some in very unfortunate situations.

Consider what all have said here, and make sure you have thought it through thoroughly before throwing in the towel.

God speed!!! ^_^