Quote: Original post by tsloper
Post by ravyne2001:
>everyone agrees that places like ITT, Devry and similar schools are worthless.

Everyone but me, perhaps. Those schools are the only choice for some folks - due to cost or their being online, or for other genuine reasons. Those schools are better than no college at all (thus not "worthless").

I wrote about it in my September 2007 column at http://www.igda.org/columns/gamesgame/gamesgame_archive.php

Well, firstly to be specific, I meant that strictly in regard to the gaming-related degrees they offer. I don't have any feeling on any of their other programs, other than my general distaste for tech schools.

However, I don't think that cost is a legitimate concern, since the programs I've heard about, such as ITTs, generally cost as much (or nearly so) as a better program such as Digipen's, and generally cost more than a typical University CS degree. Also by the cost token, I have to question whether the value of the program exceeds its cost. Perhaps worthless is too strong of a word, but if the value gained is less than that which was invested, I have to wonder if the program is worthwhile.

Quote: Original post by ravyne2001
Without further ado: Fullsail: Is it worth it?

The entire thread is good reading, but pay particular attention to the curriculum lists and analysis on page 3. JWalsh compares his University coursework to Fullsail, and below, I post Digipen's curriculum for comparison.

Many follow-ups to Fullsail's curriculum point out the red-flags in the brevity of their math education and in the fact that they teach not just one, but two 3D APIs, despite the fact that nearly all of the difference between the two is superficial.

That really was a good read~
It's funny though, since before now I had always seen Fullsail as being this high-end college for game programmers. Perhaps it even is, at least compared with this Collins College place. But I believe a CS degree is a better bet in the end. Not to mention it would be from a real school, with a real campus and a real curriculum, unlike the series of parking lots and business buildings that compose this school. I suppose I began to realize that more and more each time I rode the city bus past Arizona State University. Not to denounce this school's faculty nor its students and grads, but Collins and every trade school of its kind just seems kinda dinky by comparison.

Heh, the admissions faculty do seem pretty reluctant on letting me go. Telling me a Bachelor of Arts in Game Design is, and I quote, "surprisingly more flexible than a Computer Science degree." Not to mention the Lease Break fees on student housing they make a point to threaten me with. They won't help me reach the airport either. It's understandable though, since I'm no longer a paying customer to them.

Regardless, it's better to cut my losses and quit now while I still can.


Thank you so very much folks for all the info! It's definitely nice to have some unbiased opinions to go by.

I'd highly recommend a traditional College/University. Not just for the learning experience, but you'll be able to meet people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and you'll be able to spread your wings a little and broaden your academic horizons by taking courses in different faculties.

Plus if you ever decide to bail on games, you'll already have credits to your name and be able to almost painlessly switch majors into something that piques your interest a bit more.

I'd even think it's worth it socially to attend a College or university. Don't knock social skills, besides being able to do your job, being able to communicate well with others is a huge asset.

Just to chip in...but I too have worked for a game developer that would not hire from Full Sail. Not that I want to knock Full Sail or anything, but I also think anyone considering attending there needs to weigh that up.

I also agree that anyone considering games should go out and get a good degree and knock some demos together.

You should decide what part of game development you want to focus on: art or programming. That is not to say that you can't do both, but choose the "professional" one, the one you want to have as your career.

If you want art, you can go to ITT, Digipen, FullSail or Arts Institute etc. I am at ITT and I know that they do a good job of making you a 3D modeler/animator provided you want to learn. You could also try to learn this yourself by buying several books and training CDs - in fact, if all you want to be is a 3D guy, that's definitely what I would do (but I can't because it's too late). I know it sounds flimsy because you will be sitting and doing 3D stuff for like 2 years while working at McDonalds or whatever, which might give you and everyone else the impression that you are not progressing on your career, but if you can do it, that would be a lot better than going to school - no loans to pay back and a good career in front of you. If you want to be a 2D texture artist, one of the arts schools is probably a good choise for you.

If you want to be a developer, get a CS degree and don't even think about going to one of those schools - I know ITT is absolutely terrifyingly horrible at teaching anything programming related or math related. The whole "you don't take any classes you don't need" thing is mostly complete crap - you still have to take English and Math classes, so you might as well add other general ed courses to the list and attend a real college. Getting a CS degree requires being good at math (Trigonometry, Advanced Algebra, Calculus I, II, III, differential algebra, physics, etc etc etc) so if you don't think you can take all the math and come out alive, you should probably go with the art option. If you do get through all the math, then that's pretty much it. Any part of programming that is not math-related you can teach yourself and learn from others on forums/chats (and don't forget your old pal MSDN).

Quote: Original post by ValMan
You should decide what part of game development you want to focus on: art or programming. That is not to say that you can't do both, but choose the "professional" one, the one you want to have as your career.

If you want art, you can go to ITT, Digipen, FullSail or Arts Institute etc. I am at ITT and I know that they do a good job of making you a 3D modeler/animator provided you want to learn. You could also try to learn this yourself by buying several books and training CDs - in fact, if all you want to be is a 3D guy, that's definitely what I would do (but I can't because it's too late). I know it sounds flimsy because you will be sitting and doing 3D stuff for like 2 years while working at McDonalds or whatever, which might give you and everyone else the impression that you are not progressing on your career, but if you can do it, that would be a lot better than going to school - no loans to pay back and a good career in front of you. If you want to be a 2D texture artist, one of the arts schools is probably a good choise for you.

If you want to be a developer, get a CS degree and don't even think about going to one of those schools - I know ITT is absolutely terrifyingly horrible at teaching anything programming related or math related. The whole "you don't take any classes you don't need" thing is mostly complete crap - you still have to take English and Math classes, so you might as well add other general ed courses to the list and attend a real college. Getting a CS degree requires being good at math (Trigonometry, Advanced Algebra, Calculus I, II, III, differential algebra, physics, etc etc etc) so if you don't think you can take all the math and come out alive, you should probably go with the art option. If you do get through all the math, then that's pretty much it. Any part of programming that is not math-related you can teach yourself and learn from others on forums/chats (and don't forget your old pal MSDN).

great info

I've never understood the desire for traditional CS degrees. I started on this route, and generally found that 80% of it is only useful in a academic environment. I understand a desire for broad background, but the truth that I have experienced is that you simply don't use, or forget most of this extra stuff. This is especially true with modern programming languages.

Why do I need to learn how to manually manipulate a fixed sized circular array or write a basic unoptimized hash table class when the languages come standard with data structure classes that outperform anything I'm going to write almost always.
This is an example of where I would say its much more practical to understand why and where you would use a hash table, and any performance gains/losses, compared to knowing how to write one. Its like the age old interview question of write out a linked list, every time I'm asked this, I turn to them, and go why not use a vector, or array list. (c++/C# jobs)

The reality is once your accepted to this job, if you did write your own linked list class your likely to get hit on the head for it during a code review as you've most likely wasted time, and now created a non-standard that the rest of the team will need to learn vs. using a standard available data structure implementation everyone is familiar with and is directly supported by the language.

Then we come to math, I can't say much about this, I have never needed to use any advanced maths until I wanted to start doing graphics programming. Even then at this point, usually there are libraries that take care of 90% of this, and you really only need to understand whats basically going on. I would say math is useful though.

I will agree not having a degree makes it harder, and does close doors, I'm just not sure I would value it as any indication of capability or skill. I've worked with a lot of people with CS degrees and the reality is they didn't know anything, and you still spend months hand holding them to get them up to speed.

I currently work at Intel as a software/systems engineer I was hired on without degree, so where quite a few others that work at the company. A lot of it is just getting a chance to show what you can do, I started there as a contractor doing QA, within months I was swept up into a full time position, and the owner of a part of a massive project.

As to game programming/design specific schools, I'm not sure they are any better than traditional schools, though they do seem more practical and less academic. Which in my mind is a plus personally. I had looked at attending UAT for awhile, but couldn't justify 70k in tuition to learn what I can learn by myself or through other mediums. I will however say that the classes at www.gamesinstitute.com have been terrific in my mind, and are completely worth the cost. From what I've seen they do care about background, as well as practical. Thats why for instance in their DX classes, you start with building your own software transformation pipeline before moving into Directx's.

I guess my point of all this is to say, a degree will open some doors for you, but it won't necessarily make you a good programmer, and in many ways it will from what I've seen cost you a lot of time, and get you laughed at a bit until you adjust to a real world working environment. I know the popular opinion at my work is that school is for parties and social life, as most of us don't use what we went for school for anyways.

I am doing a traditional "Game Design" school.

Altough obviously the university here is more oriented to grab my money instead of teaching me, the workers itself (including the coordinators and principals), are intersted in teaching, and the result is great.

I remembered that I asked to Tom Sloper and sometimes here if I should continue studying here, and I ended concluding at the end that I should continue (since I already started), with several reasons, including: The important thing about getting a degree, is having a degree, the things that you need to learn to do things, you need to learn yourself.

And the university is not that bad, altough expensive, you create a network, you know teachers (a teacher that I knew this semester is a person nearly idolatred here because he was the guy that founded the company that made the first brazillian FPS), speakers and all sort of other people that are around the academy.

I was extremely skeptical of devry and decided to go there (even though I saw the horrid commercials) just enough to improve my grades and go to another school (which is why I went the online route) but I'll tell you what after attending I am extremely impressed with that school. I feel like im receiving a great education and Ive learned A LOT of math (which was always my weak point, not so much anymore), a lot of programming (for the short time I had it, I have plenty more programming classes lined up) and so far every professor I have had has been excellent and really knows their stuff. So I wouldn't knock devry out of the ring just yet :)

That being said online school is not for everyone, its really fast paced and you have to be good at independent learning. I always planned on going to DigiPen after devry because I had serious doubt about devry but now im not so sure. Only time will tell.

Mind you I also went to Penn State for 2 years and like Devry better then penn state. Although tech schools dont have quite the broad curriculum that a 4 year university has so if your a dabbler and like to sample different classes a tech school may not be for you.

Quote: Original post by Zenroth
I've never understood the desire for traditional CS degrees. I started on this route, and generally found that 80% of it is only useful in a academic environment. I understand a desire for broad background, but the truth that I have experienced is that you simply don't use, or forget most of this extra stuff. This is especially true with modern programming languages.

When I came to college, I thought the same way. However, I thought so for different reasons, and I shall detail it below after answering your questions.

Quote: Why do I need to learn how to manually manipulate a fixed sized circular array or write a basic unoptimized hash table class when the languages come standard with data structure classes that outperform anything I'm going to write almost always.

The answer to this is really very simple--so you understand what's going on at the low level. For performance-critical applications this is vital. Even for applications where performance doesn't need to be absolutely bleeding edge, it's useful.

I was going to give an example, but yours below will work.

Quote: This is an example of where I would say its much more practical to understand why and where you would use a hash table, and any performance gains/losses, compared to knowing how to write one. Its like the age old interview question of write out a linked list, every time I'm asked this, I turn to them, and go why not use a vector, or array list. (c++/C# jobs)

Just off the top of my head...

-Linked lists are generally faster to traverse sequentially, though this is of course a performance detail and there are some implementations of a vector where this is not the case.
-Linked lists are almost always faster to add to; depending on your objective you might simply re-head the list or keep a reference to the tail and re-tail it. For a vector/arraylist it becomes necessary to recopy the data into a larger storage area when you hit capacity.
-Linked lists are also almost always faster to remove from, making it an extremely versatile container for a queue/stack/deque.

Quote: The reality is once your accepted to this job, if you did write your own linked list class your likely to get hit on the head for it during a code review as you've most likely wasted time, and now created a non-standard that the rest of the team will need to learn vs. using a standard available data structure implementation everyone is familiar with and is directly supported by the language.

Of course they wouldn't ask you to implement a list for a project. That's not the point.

These questions in an interview are the human-resources equivalent of a smoke test. They aren't asking you when and why, they're asking you how. It's a very simple programming test to demonstrate a basic level of proficiency with the language and frankly if you said "why not just use a vector" to anyone I know who does interviews, you'd be tossed on your ear because it sounds like you don't understand the underlying principles.

Quote: Then we come to math, I can't say much about this, I have never needed to use any advanced maths until I wanted to start doing graphics programming. Even then at this point, usually there are libraries that take care of 90% of this, and you really only need to understand whats basically going on. I would say math is useful though.

Of course crap like calculus will be useless, but you're trivializing mathematics quite a bit. Set theory/graph theory are very important in a large number of software development areas (both in game development and general software development).

Quote: I will agree not having a degree makes it harder, and does close doors, I'm just not sure I would value it as any indication of capability or skill. I've worked with a lot of people with CS degrees and the reality is they didn't know anything, and you still spend months hand holding them to get them up to speed.

There's a lot of people who wasted college in every field. There are also a lot of people who didn't need it and went for the degree. (I'm currently doing that myself; what I have learned will supplement what I already know, but not to a hugely significant degree.)

Quote: I currently work at Intel as a software/systems engineer I was hired on without degree, so where quite a few others that work at the company. A lot of it is just getting a chance to show what you can do, I started there as a contractor doing QA, within months I was swept up into a full time position, and the owner of a part of a massive project.

The contractor route is exactly why you were picked up, I would wager. Without a degree I'd be shocked if they'd have even looked at your resume, had you applied for a position internally.


You're missing an awful lot when you restrict college to simply your major, however. College is, for many people, the last opportunity to do something educational and outside the scope of the working world. I already know the majority of my computer science curriculum. So what do I do? I learn about other things. History's an interest of mine - so I take history classes. Writing fiction is another interest - so I take classes that analyze story structure. (I'm also a business minor with an eye towards getting an MBA.)

If you want to just learn about your major, a four-year college is not where you want to be. You're looking for a tech school and nothing more. A four-year college is about teaching you how to learn, not teach you how to pursue a trade.

Quote: As to game programming/design specific schools, I'm not sure they are any better than traditional schools, though they do seem more practical and less academic. Which in my mind is a plus personally. I had looked at attending UAT for awhile, but couldn't justify 70k in tuition to learn what I can learn by myself or through other mediums. I will however say that the classes at www.gamesinstitute.com have been terrific in my mind, and are completely worth the cost. From what I've seen they do care about background, as well as practical. Thats why for instance in their DX classes, you start with building your own software transformation pipeline before moving into Directx's.

I don't know enough about GamesInstitute to judge, but I will say that Fullsail's coding division is a joke (I looked into going there, then realized that everything they taught, I either knew or could learn on my own). For that matter, any "New Media" major I have ever seen has been something of a laugh, and the one at my school (University of Maine) is no exception.

Quote: I guess my point of all this is to say, a degree will open some doors for you, but it won't necessarily make you a good programmer, and in many ways it will from what I've seen cost you a lot of time, and get you laughed at a bit until you adjust to a real world working environment. I know the popular opinion at my work is that school is for parties and social life, as most of us don't use what we went for school for anyways.

Sounds like you have a staff of people who didn't have the drive to apply themselves. I'll leave school with numerous internships and quality positions under my belt (Google's Summer of Code, for one), a well-rounded education, and a lot of good work for my portfolio, because I have the drive to apply myself.

You only get out of college what you put in. Those who scrape by and don't pursue the opportunities offered will come out of college without having gained much of a clue. You sound like one of those people. I don't mean to offend, but it sounds like you didn't put in much, and so it's unreasonable to expect much out of it in return.