Has anyone here attended the Art Institute of Phoenix for there Game Art and Design program? If so, would you share you thoughts about the program and school. Also would anyone have more information on other game development schools; pertaining to the visual arts side. Thanks.

I''m not sure about the Art Institute of Phoenix, but there is a school in Orlando FL, FullSail, that has a game dev program. I''m posting this to warn anyone that is interesting or is planning to go there. I''ve known alot of the gaming "grads" from there, and very few of them graduate with any actual skill when it comes to game development. The program''s at FullSail are outrageously expensive, and the curriculm is a joke. The problem with the gaming program is that they teach you very little actual DirectX and Opengl, and they focus on sets of wrappers for each API that are made by the instructors. Anyways, if anybody would like to e-mail me and ask more about the bogus FullSail gaming program, feel free.

Sounds like college ;-) You learn theory and more general information that is supposed to make it
easier to understand specific implementations. Learning what features a graphics API needs
should help with learning DirectX, OpenGL, or an API not yet developed.

Non necessarily a bad thing, but like college, when you get out you still have to learn the
specifics before you can do anything. You don''t know any "real world" stuff.

Technical college is typically different. You pick up general info or theory while learning very
specific things. Learning Java, learning Visual C++, learning Excel.

I would have expected that a game development program would be more like a tech college class.

Check out DigiPen.

Actually, I''m going to be going into the MIME program at Indiana University. It isn''t necessarily for game developement, but for a "Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments". Its a pretty good program ;p

Course, I have to finish my telecom major first LOL