Hi there,

I'm 23 and have studied almost every single aspect of Games Development over the last 11 years.

I spent a year interning for a company on an RTS title, originally as Community Manager and then as Lead QA, due to my proven in-depth knowledge of the genre.

I've studied and applied C++ and feel confident in using design patterns, STL and pretty much any API that I can get my hands on. I have an understanding of graphics and networking code, although my understanding of physics and lighting is a little underdeveloped.

I feel confident that I can continue to teach myself everything I need to know in C++ and create perfectly reasonable indie games.

My question is simply, should I still do a degree? Even if I land a programming role at a games company, will I forever regret not getting a degree?

I understand that not every single degree = every other degree. The one I was looking at was Computer Games Technology at The University of Abertay.

Thoughts?

IMO, degree. It has more long term value then indie development that may or may not take off. Moving to take a job at a company abroad or doing further education like a MSc/PhD etc, a degree makes this process a lot easier. Or at least degree and indie development on the side. I would also recommend looking at Derby's course which is very good and Hull's as well.

My vote is "both, or neither." The title of your post is "Degree or indie development?" but you never mentioned indie development in everything you wrote. You went on about your reasons why you don't think you need a degree, your confidence that you can teach yourself everything a university would teach you, but you never said word one about what you would do if you didn't go for the degree. When you say "indie development," does that mean you'd go it alone, creating and publishing games all by yourself? Because if you do that, I think you need to get a degree. You should study not only programming but also business and marketing and law.

To explain "both." There's no reason why you couldn't get the degree AND go into indie development. Not necessarily simultaneously (degree could come first).

To explain "neither." If you could get a full time job at that company where you interned before, then you could work your way up from there. QA and community management are known entry pathways that don't "require" a degree.

Degree.

The value of a degree is not necessarily the explicit instruction that you get but also just the time to explore ideas and develop many many networking connections. It's value is also in getting people to look at your resume. If you haven't published any games and you also have no degree, most people won't look twice at your resume. A degree guarantees neither employment nor knowledge, but not having one at least makes the former way harder.


To some extent, not having a college degree these days is becoming just as "bad" as not having a high school diploma for people trying to enter the workforce.

-me

Degree.

Even if you know or could learn to do a technical job well, HR people and the majority of hiring managers don't know enough to tell good from bad.

Degree also. In math. You need a degree of some sort to get past the HR drones before you could in theory start arguing the case for why "you're the one"

A CS degree is about only useful for background info. If you have what it takes to make it in the game dev world then you could doubtless learn the programming side by yourself. However a math degree is far more useful imo and I wish I'd done this myself. And that's what most of my colleagues with some sort of computer degree also seem to say on a regular basis.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't want both.

This goes with any industry, if you have a degree but lack the technical experience and hands on that most colleges can't give you, then that only tells me as a hirer that you have the information of what to do, but you have little understanding on how to actually apply it.

If you have experience developing indie games, but have no degree, that tells me that while you have the knowledge of the gaming industry, and are able to successfully complete titles, etc...you've only been limited to the knowledge that you sought for making that specific game, and are lacking any well-rounded education concerning the field.

College is a great way to build a portfolio for yourself, keep you interested in such an industry, and most importantly give you some tangible object(a degree) in which you could use later if game development isn't what you decide you want to do or you're unable to get into the industry.

With the way the job market is globally at this point, it's rather hard to compete for job positions WITHOUT a degree. Example: I just lost in the running for a position that paid about 30k more a year than the one I ended up getting with the company, through back door talks I was able to find out that I lost the bidding for the position due to the guy who(based on their saying) had the same experience as I did, but had a Master's degree compared to my Bachelor's degree. Those are the little things that can kick you in the nads when the time comes to actually apply and get that position

Go for your degree, there's no point not to. While trying to obtain your degree try getting internships/indie experience/more self study, and build a portfolio of your work along with your resume. Dot your i's and cross your t's and hope and pray luck goes your way

Good Luck!