The best university/college for Game Design

[Sithlad]

Hello all,

My friend's daughter is very interested in pursuing a career in Game Design and is looking for a good school in Canada. She's a high school senior this year.
She's wondering whether she should go with a Computer Science degree at a good university (assuming they offer a decent curriculum in game design) or
just go to a game-oriented college. Either way does anyone here know any good schools for game design? She currently lives in Alberta but I suppose
she doesn't really care about the location (as long as it's in Canada).


Thanks.

[TerranceN]

Well from what I have (often) heard it's easiest to break into the industry creating games (programming or art) and working your way up to designing games. Also, be careful if choosing a game-design school. They're not all bad, but a lot of people dream of designing games, so its not too surprising for-profit schools (which have a bad reputation of giving out worthless degrees to make money) would have a degree for that.

[Tony]

I would argue in favour of a solid Computer Science degree over college education. Waterloo and University of Toronto are perceived as the top in Canada; University of British Columbia is also considered strong.

Some Computer Science majors might offer minors and/or optional classes that are oriented towards video games. Carleton comes to mind; although I'm under the impression that it's a marketing move to attract more students than a serious attempt. It might have improved over the previous years thought; and there might be other Universities with similar offerings.

Computer Science with internships at game companies is by far the best bet. Although this is all more towards game development. Perhaps you (or she?) has something else in mind with game design?

edit:

Quote:

They're not all bad, but a lot of people dream of designing games, so its not too surprising for-profit schools (which have a bad reputation of giving out worthless degrees to make money) would have a degree for that.

I have also thought that over the recent years. QTF.

[Sithlad]

Thank you guys. I've also told her that a CompSci degree worth way more than a technical college. And you never know, she might get interested in something else
while studying CSci. I'm pretty sure by Game Design she means Game Design and Development. I've heard that game industry is more active in BC than in east coast
and that's why there are more game-oriented colleges there. Does anybody know anything about that?

Thanks again.

[Tony]

There are some big name game publishing companies (EA) on the west coast, so I guess a part of the industry is build up around that. Thought There's Ubisoft in Montreal and I think they might be opening an office in Toronto soon, so there's that.

The current explosion of mobile games (mostly iPhone based) is making game development accessible to much smaller (size of one?) groups from any geographic location. Also, with the current trend of social web based gaming, we'll likely be looking at a _very_ different industry in 5 years from now.

It's best to be flexible enough to jump on the new trends, and I feel like a Computer Science degree would give a better foundation for such, than any technical college that might teach practical application of what is current right now.

Edit I should have mentioned -- students her age might not like being told of what is a "better choice". It might be best for her to come here, ask her own questions, and make her own informed decision. Most members on the forums are end-of-highschool / beginning-of-University age. Although it tends to be kind of slow during the summer months.

[unoho]

ya,, i agree with tony 100%.

im also very interested in game development. so i checked out quite a few interviews (from google, of course) and found out that the developers (EA, ubisoft) tend to hire more people who has a broader knowledge in computer science.

people who study computer science tend to be very good problem solver. most of the games have very high artificial intelligence which requires a great amount of problem solving skills. there's also other aspects that requires mathematical analysis.
so it really depends on the person if they are interested in "design" or "programming" aspect of a game.

[Bored]

Tony @ Thu Aug 19, 2010 5:28 pm wrote:

Some Computer Science majors might offer minors and/or optional classes that are oriented towards video games. Carleton comes to mind; although I'm under the impression that it's a marketing move to attract more students than a serious attempt. It might have improved over the previous years thought; and there might be other Universities with similar offerings.

Actually the people running the program take it very seriously. The courses are still in the experimental stages but each years they're building on what they learnt and it's getting much better. We also have an exclusive game dev lab, wth decent pcs and a bunch of consoles. Beware though the course actually has probably the hardest/strictest requirements of the comp sci streams at Carleton, though the recent relaxing of comp sci requirements in general did a lot for that, unfortunately it didn't help me much having already finished half the courses Anyways, it may not be the best school but it's far from the worst and really is extremely underrated. The game design program is really fun and very challenging, there are some great comp sci profs here who actually TEACH (shocking I know), however the math department has like no decent profs which can make things very challenging in such a math heavy course. Well I'm done rambling, I need to get back to work, I can answer any questions about Carletons comp sci and they're game dev stream if she has any.

[Alexmula]

UWindsor offers a game development specialization. http://www.cs.uwindsor.ca/mi_248 We also have a "game lab" with some xbox's

[X Abstract X]

Bored @ Tue Aug 24, 2010 2:29 pm wrote:

Tony @ Thu Aug 19, 2010 5:28 pm wrote:

Some Computer Science majors might offer minors and/or optional classes that are oriented towards video games. Carleton comes to mind; although I'm under the impression that it's a marketing move to attract more students than a serious attempt. It might have improved over the previous years thought; and there might be other Universities with similar offerings.

Actually the people running the program take it very seriously. The courses are still in the experimental stages but each years they're building on what they learnt and it's getting much better. We also have an exclusive game dev lab, wth decent pcs and a bunch of consoles. Beware though the course actually has probably the hardest/strictest requirements of the comp sci streams at Carleton, though the recent relaxing of comp sci requirements in general did a lot for that, unfortunately it didn't help me much having already finished half the courses Anyways, it may not be the best school but it's far from the worst and really is extremely underrated. The game design program is really fun and very challenging, there are some great comp sci profs here who actually TEACH (shocking I know), however the math department has like no decent profs which can make things very challenging in such a math heavy course. Well I'm done rambling, I need to get back to work, I can answer any questions about Carletons comp sci and they're game dev stream if she has any.

I don't mean to hijack this thread but I thought it would be better to ask this publicly rather than pming you. I'm going to Carleton this year and I'm in the game dev stream. Is the focus purely on programming or is 3D modelling, sound, design, etc. part of the game development courses as well? What languages, APIs and/or engines are used? What platforms do we develop for? If you can think of anything else to add, please do. Thanks.

[Bored]

X Abstract X wrote:

I don't mean to hijack this thread but I thought it would be better to ask this publicly rather than pming you. I'm going to Carleton this year and I'm in the game dev stream. Is the focus purely on programming or is 3D modelling, sound, design, etc. part of the game development courses as well? What languages, APIs and/or engines are used? What platforms do we develop for? If you can think of anything else to add, please do. Thanks.

Well the first year course is very abstract as some people are coming in with no programming experience they can't really cover too much code till near the end of the course, so they use a lot of game maker to focus on the aspects of good game design and some basic ai. You have the option of doing you final project in either game maker or programming it yourself, most students just use game maker as it's quicker and most don't have the experience to program a game engine. The following courses are much more technical and focus almost purely on game programming, and our teacher chose to use c/c++ with directx for our second year and so we were required to use that. They do not teach 3D modelling or anything like that, however in third and fourth year game dev courses you might have a chance to do some yourself if you know how. Also besides the one game dev course each year there is of course a lot of maths, regular comp courses, and electives.