Careers and Education in Game Design

[Rostum]

Imo, pure game design courses are utter balony.

If you really want to get into the video game industry, you need to decide what you want to specialise in and where your skills and talents lie.

Are you a programmer? Are you an artist? Are you more logical minded or creative minded? It all applies, and I can garantee you a pure game design course will not offer you the skills that you require to actually get into the industry.

For the last three years I've been studying a Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment - which involves a lot of media for 3D environments, mostly focused on games. It's a huge undertaking, you really have to go in expecting to learn heaps every single day. I've worked my ass to the bone, and now I'm a lead artists in an indie game we're developing for competitions and festivals. And I am also one of the main generalist artists in a games studio that makes games for the iPhone.

So what am I trying to say? Well, if you want to get into the games industry, you are going to find it incredibly hard via a game design course. You need to specialise and you need to be able to come out of the course with a great protfolio - even then you will find it hard to get into the industry. Most of the lead roles, and I am talking about a game designer, have been in the industry for at least 10 years and did not start out as a game designer and would not have had a degree that had anything to do with games (a lot of people at places like Pixar, and I am willing to be most of the video games industry don't even have a degree in anything to do with games, they would have done a fine arts degree if they are an artist).

I hope this helps, and I hope you make the right decision and be reminded that you will be working your ass off to get anywhere, so don't treat any course you do like high school. Treat the course as if you are in the industry (60-80 hours a week)...

Cheers.

Edit: Oh, just on a side note. I've met a few lead level designers and they all started out by just modding current engines (Half-Life, Quake, UT2k4, UT3, etc. etc.). So, also considering learning to mod levels (hell, even finding some people to create content for you, I am sure there are a lot of artists out there that want a medium to present their art). It's an idea at least.