What do you think about "video game schools" I'm

>>388610104
Looks good on resume, but in most cases you'll learn more from online guides and experimenting on your own.

>>388610104
You going to Digipen?

>>388610104
they're jokes
just read a few books on game design and put them into practice

>>388610104
Complete scam, not even memeing

>>388610104
lmao

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>>388610104
the most valuable part of a digipen degree is that it tells game industry employers up front how exploitable you are. that will get you in the door, for a lifetime of exploitation. remember, the only good jobs in games are in marketing. good luck

I would think going to a proper college and getting a degree in whatever you're interested in be it programming, art, or music related would have a much broader value than going to video game school.

>>388610104
Only real school videogames, hard as fuck, could change to another field computing,design or marketing.

Thing like write whole graphics stacks since 0.

>>388610104
tighten up the graphics on level 3

Those Digipen guys that made Nitronic Rush are doing good in Distance. I don't know of any other successes from that school though.

There's nothing glamorous about video game development. In general it's no different than software development except every year that video game studios just get fucking shut down and other pops up consisting of all the staff that were fired. There is no stability in the marketplace and keeping a job for longer than five years is a miracle in itself. And every year that passes there's just more people looking to live the dream making video games but less and less actual worthwhile places to work. There's no hope of a pension and video game development is just overall less disciplined and because video games are only made in places where there's a labor subsidy for video game development, you are utterly and wholly replaceable and easily replaced by two other fresh wide-eyed kids out of school.

Digipen is probably the best place for video game education, but quite frankly everything about a computer science degree is altogether more appealing. It makes you flexible, you engage in more general education, and ultimately if you still want to make video games you can just go do that with a computer science degree. With a video game degree you're just going to have a shit time going elsewhere once you realize that the only places on the planet that still has any soul in terms of video game development are Japan, Belgium, and Poland.

Good luck. I don't mean to discourage you but you're in fucking Redmond anyways, just find an education path to get into Microsoft or Amazon - they'll work you just as hard but they're big enough to care about you. College life just seems to offer better opportunities to meet different people or try new things whereas Digipen is all day every day video games.

Again, don't get me wrong, it's a good school. Video games are just a shit industry.

>>388610104
You fucked up.

>>388610272
This guy has NEVER decided whether or not to hire someone if he thinks that shit looks good on a resume. I'd much rather see a community college dropout with a few certs peppered in and maybe a link to a github or some actual projects.

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>government is giving me 2k to go to school

>>388610104
Think about it from someone else's perspective. If you were a guy who taught himself or went to a prestigious university and you were surrounded by coworkers who did the same, would you want to hire someone who went to... digipen institute of technology? Is that next to the mickey mouse school of law? don't sue me disney

>>388615410
So you're saying the best job you can get out of digipen is teaching at digipen.

>>388615630
Don't know what it's like in your country, but over here most employers don't even think about what is written in the resume, most just skim through to see how much of it is listed, so anything that fills up the page looks good.
Even then, that guy won't even get into serious game development with a "video game school" alone, but that degree also says he is literate in computer technologies, which is important in pretty much any job these days.

>>388616216
No. You can easily get into any big video game studio you want. Every established studio will be happy to hire someone who pretty much hits the floor running. Except Valve - those fuckers only hire seasoned experts.

The problem is that nobody gives a fuck if you care about what you're making. You do the work put in front of you and as a programmer you pretty much have zero say in what happens only that you have to make it happen. And if you are going to do that anyways you might as well work for a juggernaut like Microsoft and not a studio that just might collapse without warning. All the neat benefits like E3 or PAX access or any stupid shit like that doesn't compare to not having job security or the opportunity to have a pension.

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Reminder that as soon as you're going to school to get a job, you've failed yourself.
You should always, ALWAYS be going to schools to learn. Even if it's some trash for-profit school like Digipen, if you came out of it more educated in something you wanted to learn then you did a good job.

>>388610104
When I was in HS Digipen opened and everyone wanted to attend. Is it still a thing?

OP here
They keep talking about how the courseload is insane and how tons of students consistently drop out every year.
I'm not surprised. I've already seen plenty of real autisimo-supreme literal jean shorts and fedoras. They have trouble forming sentences.
Maybe I am retarded (I know I am)

>>388615410
This. As sad as it sounds, game development is in practice just a shittier version of normal software development. Job security is nil, you'd get paid better if you applied your skills elsewhere etc.

Of course that doesn't apply anymore if you are really, really good and manage to become a person of importance, but let's be real: out of everyone who enters the vidya industry, it's something like 1 of 1000 that actually get to the point where they aren't just replacable fodder.

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Hey OP, I'm gonna need that Gameboy Advance copy of Fallout 4 on my desk by Monday.

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So I see you just got out of DigiPen! Welcome to your new job at Shitfuck Development! Here's who you will be working with.

>>388619339
Hey guys, nice to meet you. What are we making?

>>388618707
They're not really kidding, the course load is much higher than full time at most universities, the worst of it being the second year. Also I hope you like those jean shorts and fedora autismos, group work is the most important thing there.

Also if you're going there for art, just drop out right now and go somewhere else unless you already have contacts in the industry.

>>388619390
Actually, we just went bankrupt because our last game was lambasted by critics and sold poorly and are IndieStarter campaign fell through. Oh well, see ya!

>>388610104
I would say go for it. But ALWAYS have a back up plan. If you do make this as a main carrier choice you'll probably be bouncing between studios.

In my speculation, I would do this as a side job. You'd probably find more enjoyment in the industry than doing it full time and designing/programming/drawing sit you don't give a fuck about.

>>388615410
>>388616604
>>388618950
Alright, u guys seems to know the real deal.
say i got a game programming diploma now, not even digipen nor degree.
what other jobs can i look into?
am i fucked forever now?
should i prepare that rope to hang myself?

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>>388610104
DigiPen was an interesting novelty about ~15 years ago when they started offering their modern undergraduate degrees. The video game industry was getting bigger and bigger, and for creative types it was like "wow, it's like film school except for video games".

Except the global financial crisis then happened and crushed everybody's dreams. The material at these specialist colleges then become less rigorous.

The best "video game school" these days is called a regular university with a CompSci degree.

>>388619402
is a BAGD considered art?
I tried a cheap local university for computer science first, found out why it was cheap pretty fast, 90 year old "teachers" trying to explain computers just didn't work. Decided to go do something I'm actually interested instead of being miserable. Obviously I love wasting money

>>388610104
Pay an expensive as fuck degree only to get an unstable job for the rest of your life, not really worth it, my dude, but I wish you luck.

>>388610104
I would go if blizzard or valve started a video game school.

>>388615701
thats 1 semester at a community college m8

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>tfw to stoopid to enter DigiPen
feels bad

>>388620629
Why? they literally hire people from digipen

>>388620314
No, Game Design is probably fine for actually getting a job once you graduate, with the caveats others have mentioned above about the industry in general. Bachelor of Fine Arts is what I'd avoid. It's not like they're teaching you bad information there, but they spread you too thin, you don't specialize in any one kind of art, and they don't teach you how you need to get an art job or make connections, so almost everyone I know that graduated with a BFA does something entirely unrelated to art. One is a supervisor for truckers, one leads a test team for Xbone games, another one went to vet school, yet another killed himself, and the only one still going after art jobs freelances and is a restaurant server to pay bills.

Personally I dropped out because I didn't make competent friends, and wasn't willing to take the reins on teams full of autismos, and immediately went into IT.

As a BAGD though you probably won't have the cross-industry flexibility an RTIS student would have, so if you hate the industry you might be kinda stuck.

>>388620629
The Portal team came from digipen

>>388610104
Massive scams, even more than art schools.

>>388610104
I haven't been to one, but they sound like they're the same deal as music schools. Maybe worse even, music schools give the possibility to go really in depth in that field (to the point where you step out of music and end up in advanced academic wankery) and I'm not sure game dev schools do the same.
If you want to make a game, make a game.

>>388620875
Thanks for the info

>>388620875
>Bachelor of Fine Arts is what I'd avoid. It's not like they're teaching you bad information there, but they spread you too thin, you don't specialize in any one kind of art

I know this won't apply for 90% of people here, but if you happen to be rich, it's considered a good thing to do a broad undergraduate degree and a specialist postgraduate degree.

>>388621107
I mean if you're going to Digipen you're clearly burning money anyways, so it makes sense for their BFA. The main thing I find to be a problem for them is that they make no effort to teach their students how or where to make connections to actually get jobs. It's not like those people are bad at art, but they just don't know who to talk to or where to send their portfolios.

>>388621283
what are you doing now?

>>388621283
>not accredited

I forgot to mention this to >>388621004
I went there, while they do have some obscure form of accreditation, do not count on your credits to leave Digipen and be worth a shit anywhere else.

I went back to community college and even base curriculum stuff like Calculus does not transfer out.

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Plenty of normie public universities offer video game subjects these days.

Why would you go to clown college when you could just append a few video game units to your Computer Science/Information Technology/Fine Arts/whatever degree that actually is fully accredited cause it's from a real fucking university?

>>388621537
So you are still attending school currently? Or are you working somewhere?

>>388619154
R-right away, Mr. Howard, s-sir

>>388620629
if valve started a vidya school all the classes would just be on economics and psychology kek

>>388617080
This. I fell for the STEM meme, couldn't find a job in my field and now I'm a security guard. Pretty good job, cushy and fun, but I'm not using my degree. If I could do it all again, I'd go to fucking art school or something. I'd still be in the same boat, but at least I'd be able to draw cute girls getting mindbroken on my down time.

>>388622081
I mean, you could still be drawing on your down time, art school is 90% directed practice, just pick up a book on anatomy for artists, and practice practice practice.

Also just keep looking for jobs while being a security guard, but this time with the comfort that you're not in a hurry to find something and start work, so you can apply to stuff that appeals to you.

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>>388622246
I am, I'm just a few years behind where I could be. ANd if I went to say, Calarts, I might have some contacts in the animation industry so I wouldn't have to be a complete self starter. I'm learning Japanese too. Honestly, my biggest problem right now is that my job is so cushy that I have no incentive to look for a better one since while it will be better pay, it will be a shit ton more work. Though I did try for the navy and I'm on the list for the MA environmental police

>>388622395
Ah, well, you can look to some nebulous future retirement and try to get a better paying job, or be okay with how things are now and just be comfortable. Kinda up to you if you're fulfilled doin what you're doing, and there's certainly nothing wrong with prioritizing your now, so long as it's not like... radically jeopardizing your future like via ridiculous meth addiction or something.

Also just having a degree is a benefit, even in totally unrelated fields. I find this fucking retarded but they will absolutely prioritize people with degrees over people with experience in tons of situations.

>>388622081
>at least I'd be able to draw cute girls getting mindbroken on my down time.
Not only that but you'd probably be able to get some patreon money for that too

>>388610104

DigiPen Alum here.

Scanned through the thread, most people seem to have a pretty good idea of what to expect out of attending DP.

I majored in Real Time Interactive Simulation, which is basically a CS degree with 5 extra credits of project work tacked on every semester. I've been employed consistently since I graduated, but that's not the case with everyone who graduated with me. If you're not prepared to switch industries, or move, you're severely limiting your employment opportunities.

When I started there, there were only three degree programs: RTIS, an Art program and a Computer Engineering program. From my understanding, the art program isn't anything special. You get to make industry contacts, maybe and that's about it as far as anything special. The CE program had, at most, ten students in it. I don't even know if they still offer it.

Half way through my time there, they added the two design programs. This attracted all the losers who couldn't cut it in one of the other programs. These were all the people who had "great ideas", but didn't have any of the skills to actually contribute on a team. I wouldn't recommend a design program to anyone. Go get a useful degree and do game design in your free time. It's gonna look way better on a resume that way.

Long story short: you get out what you put in. If you're a good student and self-motivated, you're going to do fine.

You're not going to have the typical college experience. There's next to no women on campus; there's very little in terms of social events; and there's an overwhelming number of students who are either socially mal-adjusted or on the spectrum.

Also, it's expensive as fuck.

>>388614796
Narbacular drop and tag: the power of paint became portal 1 and 2

>>388623089
I dropped out second year, though I imagine I went roughly same time as you - did you end up making friends and getting on teams that didn't suck, or did you just take control of the socially inept/autistic team mates to get shit done on the project courses?

Just a point of curiosity since I never actually kept up with any other RTIS students that graduated, just BFA students.

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>>388622770
I've got a few hobbies that could turn to money. I'm not too bad a sculptor, so I've been trying to make some garage kits and maybe turn that into a full toy company. That's part of why I'm learning Japanese actually, so I can go to wonfes or AKGarden as a circle and then maybe one day get a job with Koto or Daibadi.

But again, art school would have been a better use of my time for that whole field too. The point is that I got memed into a degree as a job investment when I should have gotten it in something I enjoy more even if I thought it made me less employable.

Computer game development courses are always a scam.

>>388623338

For what it's worth, I started there in the fall of 2007. The game project freshman year is a complete crapshoot. You don't have enough time to work out a solid team before starting work on anything. I ended up doing 90% of the work on my freshman game, having one of my teammates drop out, having one that contributed and having one that was a useless fuck.

Sophomore year was probably the best I had in terms of a game team. The four of us were all friends, we were all competent and we all put in the time necessary to get shit done. For whatever reason, we didn't stick together as a team for Junior year, which probably meant that things weren't as rosy as I thought they were.

Junior year: got a new team, one person from the old team. This year was a lesson in interpersonal skills and cutting dead weight. We kicked one person off the team because they contributed nothing and were a pain in our collective ass. Later, within a month of the semester ending, another teammate quit the team out of frustration. That left me and one other person to finish a game. Fun times.

Senior year: 0 fucks left to give, grab another teammate from my sophomore team. Decide we're going to try and do a simple game, leaving us room to polish it up and spend time interviewing/looking for jobs. The professor leading the game course thinks this is dumb and pushes the two of us to aim much higher. We come up with a different idea to placate her. This was stupid; our original plan was way better. We end up not having the resources/motivation/time to complete the expanded idea. We pass, whoopee.

>>388624109
Actually the same year I started, I had the opposite luck with teams. First year I just happened into a team that was at least passably competent just by happening to sit near them. Second year I wasn't in the same class as any of them, so once again got sorted into the same sort of team of people happening to sit near each other.

That time didn't work out so well, it was so immediately obvious that nobody was going to pull their weight (I didn't talk much at the time so to them I probably seemed like an autistic waste of time), and I didn't have it in me to just step up and tell them what to do. I ended up just getting depressed and stopped showing up, pretty much the shittiest way to drop out, but what're you gonna do I was fresh out of high school.

I've since determined that if I want a team to function I need to be willing to start yelling at them and managing their time. Ironic that I ended up being an ad-hoc team leader for crisis control considering I dropped out of college due to not being able to manage teams.

>>388610104
You probably get more use out of a course to teach you programming in general to use in games than a course that promises you vidya games.

>>388619154
You actually do have to work on Gameboy hardware at some point, but that's probably just a Nintendo thing.

they're diploma mills and there's literally nothing you can't learn for free on the internet that you'll pick up from those "schools"

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If you're looking to make a game you'll need concept art so you can visualise the thing you wanna make, have some artbooks /v/. Keys to Drawing would be a good start.

Andrew Loomis's Books
>https://mega.co.nz/#F!WBERCQiB!uMTQlTgeSCK_4FxKDwE_Lg

Burne Hogarth's Books
>https://mega.co.nz/#F!fINAQbZK!YtfCRPbKIIZjT84meSl3DQ

"The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards
>https://mega.co.nz/#!6ZsTESZD!cBHFG4pgOWGurLr8SgC79v3Eu-gOjmaH9JAC_XeYQEA

"Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson
>https://mega.co.nz/#!LZsVXTjJ!t5W4mBq9v2iBbJWxvHM04rrMtA4wV7d3ZqX4daJowL4

"Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters" by Robert Beverly Hale
>https://mega.co.nz/#!CAVSjLZa!d-xFoYCx1TrzqOLbL0LVN9ZmzRrFxtaz6JDCvBSN5hY

"How to Draw" by Scott Robertson (HIGH quality scan)
>https://mega.co.nz/#!iB81WbxK!eNSWCFuDinDeSXib_e0s6ZpfPIAMEGEPpz8otwRiIoQ

"Alla Prima: Everything I know about Painting" by Richard Schmid
>http://www.mediafire.com/download/l5eatwcpn8w7la8/%28Richard+Schmid%29+Alla+Prima+-+Everything+I+Know+About+Painting.pdf

"Color and Light - A Guide for the Realist Painter" by James Gurney (HIGH quality scan)
>http://www.mediafire.com/view/uecuhtr5vdd9kx6/%28James_Gurney%29_Color_%26_Light_-_A_Guide_for_the_Realist_Painter.pdf

"Imaginative Realism: How to paint what does not exist" by James Gurney
>https://mega.nz/#!ywsSCQzB!HC07i7ntFEYQUAOy9GBYWxTrF2fzbo67Jf4jVuj57DE

"Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest R. Norling
>https://mega.co.nz/#!yEVH0RzI!hExkmbL9WTEV20aI10De7q9J4rf3t3A6uluz4cT9FbM

"The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams
>https://mega.co.nz/#!bFchmCAZ!papybufoEqDH8Vn19hVk8zxohaYOB5XjLM2U-EZT8Js

"Anatomy for Sculptors" by Uldis Zarins
>https://mega.co.nz/#!GIdSSZib!rI1rTzWtIiUq0Qn4ECJHU-fOhB011wFTH8Egqdguk5M

DYNAMIC BIBLE
>https://mega.nz/#F!CF9g3QpD!Mc41x88vBi1afeoBWxcp-A

HYPER ANGLE + Drapery
>https://mega.nz/#!AxwBELxR!4qtKaU55buF-l6NNPoyu2JWAhM0bFTrV5-SUxfqq3Eg

>>388610104
the video game industry sucks. youll be overworked like a farm donkey.

source: aaa game dev who no longer plays games because she got burned out

>>388627142
Neat, thanks. I've got Keys to Drawing and Loomis, but I'm always looking for more since I still suck.

>>388610104
I am a senior and I start back in school next week and I want to be a game dev but schools that have both CS and a game programming minor or concentration are way more expensive than I have to spend or think I will get in scholarships and I wont get much financial aid and grants because my parents make the middle class income where they are have enough to live in comfort, but not poor enough to consider low class or make enough to be considered upper class. I don't want to get a degree in game design, but thought if I got a degree in CS and a minor in game design that could work better.

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>>388628085
It's alright to suck so long as you want to improve and draw for yourself. I draw shit for a gay cartoon because I like it and want to draw the characters I like better each day. I also study some programming because eventually I want to make a small fangame for it too.
I suck but the important part is the want to be better and making small goals, say to yourself that you'll find at least 15 to 30 minutes to draw. Then you won't fall into the trap of saying you'll draw today and procrastinate because you have nowhere to start.

>>388628416
Yeah, my absolute minimum is two pages a day, which usually falls right in that 15-30 minute window. Drawing's just a bit discouraging since the improvement takes so long to actually show noticeably compared to so many other things. I just want to draw cute cats and dogs having sex with their owners.

I think we're still at a point where schools specifically for game design are a scam and a waste of money. At least they are in the U.S. Go to a regular college and just take some gaming courses while getting a degree in something useful.

>>388622081
J-Jace?