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Getting an Edjumacation
DrProfessor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Sigh, I decided to make the message simpler as a whole when told red text is annoying:
I'm from NewYork and really want to go into game design. I've wanted to for a very long time now and tried to take the necesary steps, you know, learning to animate (in flash, it's not professional, but it still gives me an idea of how animation works I think). Learning C++. Learning every program and engine professionally used. So I'm not extremely talented at C++ but I have made the normal tic tac toe and attempted greater things, and sort of failed. But I was wondering if anyone had college reccomendations for me. I know that it's going to be expensive and I know that it's no exactly a sure fire field to work in, but I've heard alot of things about alot of different colleges just want to see if I'm missing out on any grand options.
I'm from NewYork and really want to go into game design. I've wanted to for a very long time now and tried to take the necesary steps, you know, learning to animate (in flash, it's not professional, but it still gives me an idea of how animation works I think). Learning C++. Learning every program and engine professionally used. So I'm not extremely talented at C++ but I have made the normal tic tac toe and attempted greater things, and sort of failed. But I was wondering if anyone had college reccomendations for me. I know that it's going to be expensive and I know that it's no exactly a sure fire field to work in, but I've heard alot of things about alot of different colleges just want to see if I'm missing out on any grand options.
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Well not every kind, just 2D and a few attempts at 3D which I actually found much harder for me. I need to learn to think in 3D.
I was a programmer at EA and Activision, and eventually wound up getting out of the video game industry. My two cents: you should work on leveraging your animation skills to get into the industry and see if you like it. Once in, you can look for opportunities to move over to the design side of thing, if that's what you want to do. A lot of people on development teams actually work in the areas that overlap between the three traditional skill sets (artist, programmer, designer).
Fundamentally, there are a lot of people out there with the "game designer" credentials and no experience in the industry. That kind of background is not going to stand out on an HR person's desk. Those that do get in often wind up being "underemployed" as QA testers, and they frustrate both themselves and their teams by being armchair designers (submitting bug reports with their "great" design ideas rather than actual bugs). It is more important to develop a portfolio of work (something you could bring to an interview and SHOW somebody) and a network of contacts in the industry (most job opportunities aren't advertised and it's far easier to get in as a friend of some one on the inside than through HR - this is true in most industries).
Also, not to diminish your hopes, but most designers wind up working with another person's intellectual property and designing within those constraints. Only a few get to design their own worlds, fresh from their imagination. The average length of some one's career in the industry is pretty short (around 5 years) - people get burned out on the unending crunch time, or their spouse does, or kids come along and the long hours don't seem appealing anymore, or your health starts to fail (one guy I worked with at EA died in his mid-30s for reasons related to the lifestyle), or you decide you're smart enough to work less and make more money doing something else, or some combination of the above. You mentioned this is your passion, and I'm sure that's true right now, but people do change. Degrees and diplomas in game design don't translate well to other industries (whereas a Computer Science degree or animation diploma or whatever can). Some of those bitter stories you mentioned are probably written by people who got into the industry, wound up with a job, worked for awhile, and are now out, but still paying off the loan they took out to get the game design credentials.
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Thank you! Art, programming, and design. I'm mostly interested in the art... How things look and appear to the player, but I really want to learn every aspect of it. Like the programming, how it relates to the art, how, in a fighting game, an animation can be a half a second and yet still look like a kick effectively. Or how to have a character that looks like it's cross hatched even though it's animated in 3D.
I'm also very ready to sweep floors for a couple years. I mean, perhaps not so literally. I know people change, but what I'm sort of expecting is... Long hours up til 3 Am drawing up links and dialogue for every eventuality between player and character... And mapping out a world that is easy to get around yet still feels like adventure, and filling that world up with little settlements and wars and broken down trains from 100 years ago that players want to explore and caverns that turn out to house a small community of people... I love doing stuff like that. But I also love the mapping out the class system and the weapons and finally coming up with that new and interesting weapon that no one else will ever have in their game for sure, and how it works and how fast it move and how it's balanced with the weapons the other characters have. And No I can't just give the boss more health and make the fight long, he has to be harder. Writing stories, making worlds, sometimes I start with a world and move backward to the game.
Ok, honestly? I'm not sure if every average joe that want's to go into the game industry is thinking exactly the way I am. You know, everyone else describes wanting to do exactly what I mentioned above, and everyone else has been balancing theoretical fighting characters that will never exist since they were 1 and finding out how each one can interact smoothly in the story line. But weather or not I go into game design, I'm definitely going to end up mapping out these characters and dreaming up these worlds regardless.
SO! THAT being said! I'll keep working on my animations, but I still am just not sure about the whole computer science degree vs game design degree. If I could find a sure fire way to learn all those game design things I want to with Computer Science stamped on my Diploma, I would. That's probably what I want to do. P.S. I know I'll be working on someone else's stuff. I want to infact! Heck, do you know how HARD it must be to BALANCE FIGHTING GAME CHARACTERS?! How do you end up with 20 people with different abilities that all fight on the SAME LEVEL? I don't want to do that on my own, I need exPERIENCE for that sh-t.
You want to be a game designer, although it also sounds like you want to be an animator and you want to make the levels and you want to write the dialog (writers do that). Basically you just want to create video games. That's not really a viable career path. All of those tasks are handled by specialists, and although there do exist people in this world who sit on top and tell everyone what to do, there are like, 8 of those people, and they're all famous. If you want to design games like this, your best bet is doing it as a hobby.
If you're actually interested in programming or animation or something specific like that, there are careers in all of those. Programming is what I thought you originally wanted to do so you can read the spoiler below for that. If you want to be an animator, you can pretty much forget about the programming stuff. You don't need to know it. What you DO need is animation chops, which are not easy: you need to be an actor and an artist. If you're actually serious about the animation stuff, edjumacation is largely optional, because you will be judged on your portfolio. You CAN go to art school and learn animation, but that's a very tenuous career path that I would urge you to stay away from unless you really feel like there's an artist inside of you.
Since you really sound excited about "mapping out these characters and dreaming up these worlds," though, I would say you should look to get a job in something people will pay you for rather than in something that everyone would love to do. If you ask 5 posters on these forums for video game ideas, you'll get 10 different plans for the best game ever. Games aren't made out of ideas: they're made out of animations and computer code and 3d models and sound recordings.
This is the original post I wrote before I read the post right above:
If you really must get into the games industry, they don't really care about your credentials so much as your skills, so you're going to need to get past "tried and failed to make tic-tac-toe" if you want a job. Your best bet if you want an adjumacation is to get a degree in computer science or something and learn to program while you're doing that, so that if you ever decide that working in the game industry isn't for you, you can go on and get a job being a programmer at some other place.
Honestly though, unless you're passionate at all about programming, I'd dump the whole game aspect altogether. Games are fun because you're playing them, not because you're making them, and the game industry is not the best place to be aiming to end up.
Yes yes, I know I know. Believe me I know that I want to do a lot, and I certainly know that the person who (Portal 2 reference comin up) designed wheatly, the person who wrote his dialogue, the person who came up with his personality, and the person who actually animated him are all different people. And they're all in a different field than the person who scripted when he would say what, the person who dictated his range of movements on the rail, and the person who created the sounds of the little sparks and squeaks. What about somthing like a concept artist? I understand a lot about what goes into animating and programming and all, but what about the person who draws what the modellers and texture-rurs are going to be working on?
Edit: You know what? I'm sorry, I'm talking about alot of dreams and aspirations here. Let me just talk about what I actually expect to be able to DO. I think I could be an animator, but I won't be able to be picky about it, will I? I would perfer not to be working on a war shooter, should they still be popular by the time I leave college. I'm also not as interested in level design as I sound, but there has to be SOMEONE who's in charge of the general direction of the story and the world it takes place in, even if it has nothing to do with the game play. I've heard that games sometimes have no story or word, just a game concept. The rest is worked on later. Well I hope that the person who makes the characters and the person who makes the look of the world aren't different. (perhaps not the level design, just the look itself. As in, futuristic, tribal, any major land marks, any consistent weather)
Second Edit: ALSO. I'm not talking about a multi Million dollar production! I wouldn't expect to be calling the shots on those if I won the lottery twice! I'm talking about little games with perhaps a few quirky characters and interesting systems that I think people will have fun with. Perhaps a larger game later on with a bit more depth and girth to it with customized characters and a larger world and the works. Games that end up being indie, sometimes niche, sometimes they fade away, sometimes they become the next Cave Story. Maybe. Is it an iffy field? Yeah. I'm talking about it as a hobby I suppose, but I would like to make money off of it. Is it really, really far fetched to work on a game as a hobby while I work on a game (for some company) as a job? So yeah I want to climb my way into the publics short attention span with my amazing games.
But yeah, I understand. Go into computer science. Or animation. Or something that's not game design. As a back up plan pretty much. Which is something I'll need, because I'm going to hate the game industry within 5 years. Got it.
1) Good luck having a hobby when you work 80 hour weeks for EA. If you want to do this as a hobby, you're going to have to learn how to code.
2) Everything TychoCelchuuuu has said in this thread is 100% correct.
3) You have no idea what you want to do or how. Why do you want to even make games in the first place?
Every video game team is different. In my experience, a lot of the concept art is done by senior artists during the design stage of the game. This might not always be the case - for instance, when working with a well developed intellectual property, you might get all of your concept art from an external source. Having the ability to make concept art is great, but it shouldn't be your focus, at least this early in your career.
Really, what you need to focus on is thinking of ways that you will add value to a game development team. This is really general advice for any job, though. Part of how you determine what value you will bring is by getting to know the industry before hand. You can do this by getting to know people in the field, arranging informational interviews, that kind of thing. If you're in New York City (not sure if you meant city or state), there's already a fair number of studios around that you can get in touch with. You can also get involved with organizations like IGDA, do some volunteer work with them at events, that kind of thing.
On the educational side - if you're not yet a CS student and you're writing C++, you can probably hack it in that kind of degree (if you're interested). Flash is also a good skill to have, as it's also used for things like menus and such. If you are leaning in that direction, check out universities that offer CS and also have some kind of game design program. Rochester Institute of Technology is an example of that kind of institution. You can do a degree in Game Design, but you could also do a CS degree and take some electives in Game Design. If you're working in the game industry, no one will care what your degree is in (those dedicated game design programs probably didn't exist when the senior members of your team were in school). On the other hand, if you decide you want to be a programmer at Chase Manhatten after a few years in the game industry, they will be more interested that you have a CS degree, rather than game design, even if you have a pile of game design electives in there. Obviously I'm focusing a bit on programming and computer science here, as opposed to animation, because that's my background. The principles behind this advice can be applied to other fields, though.
Oh, and if you're thinking about career decisions, and you like manga (or even if you don't), check out The Adventures of Johnny Bunko by Daniel Pink. Daniel Pink has done a lot of work on the science behind motivation and how it applies in the workplace. The Johnny Bunko stuff is a quick read that highlights some important points when it comes to both getting a job and living with it once you've got it.
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Siiigh. I don't think that last thing counts as advice. And yeah, I'll have to learn to code. I'm getting a little worried about this thread, it may not have been the best idea to ask...
A little worried about the direction the thread might go. Ahem... I'm probably sounding like I'm confused and befuddled, but no, I get all your advice and I'm appreciating it! I'm just gonna take a deep breath and try not to ramble.
I was looking for just this! I'm going to look around alot on IGDA. Thank you very much for your help and understanding! I know it's alot, but I've been trying to get an all around knowledge about games so it's not that I want to DO everything, but just that I want to have an all around understanding so that I can be better at what my specialty is. Which for the moment is animating.
It's touching that you're worried about the fate of this thread, but at this juncture I'd be a little more self-critical about your possible career path than about the direction your thread is going. It sounds like you're regretting this because you feel like we're jumping down your throat and crushing your dreams with hammers that we bought at Despair Inc., but as much as it might feel like that, we're really not in the business of dream crushing, wholesale. We're only in the business of dream crushing during that time of the month when someone makes a "how can I be a game designer" post. This is not a joke: we get many of these threads, and we post the same advice in each thread, because the answer is always the same. Check out these threads please.
It's nice that you've narrowed your focus to animation, or at least it would be nice if you could at least pin yourself down to that, but things like "and yeah, I'll have to learn to code" or "I want to have an all around understanding so that I can be better at what my specialty is" or saying that animation is what you're interested in "for the moment" fill us with dread because that's really not the sort of attitude that matches up with the way reality works.
Animators do not program. They do not design. They sit in a dark room with a mirror in it and they have a list of things that need to be animated and they animate those things, pausing occasionally to act something out in the mirror or to go home. Sure, in game animation there are things like IK and technologies like Euphoria and so on that are fairly technical compared to some guy drawing cels for Disney, but at its heart, animation is an art, and you're an artist, who will happen to be working on games. You don't need to have some sort of grand overarching vision for where the game is going. You just need to be able to make animations.
What makes me really worried are those two edits you made to one of your posts. In the first you said that you know that not everyone does everything, but there's someone in charge, right, and you just want to be them! So that's bad, because like I mentioned, there are 8 of those people alive today, and one of them is Shigeru Miyamoto.
Then in your second edit you said "whoa, hold on, I don't want to be in charge of Mario, I just want to be in charge of those small quirky games, like Cave Story." That is a much better goal, and it's doable, but guess what? It's doable by the people actually doing it, not the people failing at tic-tac-toe. Those adorable indie games come from two places: savants and small (or even tiny) studios. If you're like the guy who can make Cave Story or Dwarf Fortress or La Mulana or Spelunky or Braid or Minecraft, then do it! Go make those games! Don't get an edjumacation! Edjumacation will get in your way. Any of those guys can get a job in any company in the industry, I would suspect, but they're happy doing their own thing.
Indie games also come from small studios made up of a small number of people. That sounds better, right? You just want to lead one of those things! Unfortunately this is where we come back to the whole "everyone wants to design games" thing, because those indie studios already have projects. There aren't groups of 4-6 talented artists and coders looking desperately for someone to design or balance their game. They've already got their own game projects.
There is one route in, of course, which is to have a skill on top of being a game designer. For whatever reason it seems like you've picked animation, in which case Edith is pretty much right: be an animator, join an indie team via IGDA or whatever, and since the teams are so small you can often end up being a designer in those.
But, really, why? Are you actually an animator, or is this your vector for inserting yourself into game design? Acquiring a secondary skill in order to make yourself useful to a game company so that you can do what you think you really want to do is an option, but it's far from a sure thing, and for 90% of people what will end up happening is that you're not going to be a fantastic animator because you're only doing it so that you have a way to break into game design, and even if you are good enough to end up being hired as an animator you might not end up doing design, and even if you do end up designing you might find out you don't like it, and even if you do like it, indie game design is not exactly a lucrative field.
But it's a great hobby. Which is what I would suggest. Anyone who makes an awesome game as a hobby has a career in the game industry waiting for them, and although it's harder, at least you have an actual career to fall back on instead of a mountain of debt, a worthless degree from Full Sail, and no marketable skills. If you really enjoy game design and animation you'll enjoy it as a hobby, and if you're actually good at it, you'll have a portfolio that will get you hired anywhere. It's all about risk/reward: given the much less risky option of pursuing this for fun rather than for a career, ask yourself why it would make sense to bet everything on the path that might not increase your chances all that much?
I do love staying up dark nights in a room, alone, looking at all the scenes of my animation, calculating that "If I can finish drawing this frame at in this amount of times than I'll have 3 seconds done in half an hour!" That, infact, is probably one of my favourite things. That's why I'm "leaning toward" animation. I think I'll dip my fingers in the waters of the game industry with animation and see how it feels. If I find the time for a social life maybe I'll gather some old friends together and work on some project or a comic on the side, something like that. I have to find out more about the reality of game development. I don't think I know as much as I thought. I thought I had some kind of idea, but it looks like a large body of knowledge is actually useless. It's more "just do what your told" than I thought. It would seem. In the professional world anyway. What if's are pointless and how should's show inexperience. Something like that?
Nobody will hire you to have a grand vision in your head. People need animators to animate, and if there's anything about the game that the animator needs to know, they'll learn it. If you do want to try out the game industry a little bit, do some animation for mods or for an indie team. They can always use the help and that's a great way to find out if you enjoy it, and it will help you build up your portfolio. If you're a good animator, all you really have to do is make good animations, stick them in a demoreel, and email them to whoever's hiring. They're not going to ask you about your game designs or anything like that.
Here's an idea. iOS development is all the rage these days. People see Tiny Birds and Angry Birds and Tiny Angry Dungeon Raiders making millions of dollars and say "I want a piece of that!" Actually getting a piece of that is harder than it sounds, but in any case there are a ton of people developing things.
From the number of indie iOS games I see with horrible, horrible art and animation, I'm guessing you could advertise yourself on some iOS development forum and find some other like-minded new optimistic game programmer that you could collaborate with. You get an actual game on your resume, have a shot at earning tens of dollars, and get hands-on experience seeing which parts of game development are really your cup of tea.
Atleast, I think that's what you say. Right? And then you do it. Right?!
I'll be an animator, but I can't do it for ever. 3, 4 years should be enough. The hope is that then there will be a job at a different position, or for a game I'm more interested in. After that perhaps I'll be an animaton or art director. I'm feeling a little more confident in my ability to find a job like that...
My other option is the wonderful world of indie games. Where if you can polish it enough, you can make money off of it. And after a whole 1 guy(s) buys, hacks, translates it to every language, and distributes it for free, you have yourself a famous game and a grand total of 10 dollars.
That's how I imagine it works. I'm not exactly diving into it for the money, though.
Seriously, thank you.
That's not what I saaaaiiiiiiid at alllllllll. I'm hoping that swapping "editions" for "additions" and the similar sorts of things in your posts are evidence of laziness or dyslexia rather than actual illiteracy, but it's getting a little difficult for me to imagine that you've made it all the way through my posts and have understood what I've said, and yet still churned out this quoted post. This means you're either ignoring me or not understanding me, so I'll take the charitable view and give one last try in terms of telling it like it is, this time in short words and short sentences:
1. You think you want to be a game designer for a living. There are two problems with this.
1a. You might not actually like game design, or be good at it.
1b. Nobody will hire you to do game design.
2. You have not thought much about 1a and your plan to fix 1b is to be an animator for a few years until you can murder your employer and take their place. There are two problems with this.
2a. This doesn't solve 1a, namely, you might not be much of a game designer or you might not enjoy it.
2b. You can't just be an animator for a few years until finally you move on to being a game designer. There are about 8 game designers, and you can probably name all of them (Levine, Miyamoto, Spector, Kojima).
3. "That's okay," you say, "I'll just be a designer for indie games." There are two problems with this.
3a. You still have not solved 1a.
3b. Working on indie games isn't exactly a rock solid career path that you can easily embark on.
Thankfully, though, I have the solution! Work on indie games or mods in your spare time and get a real person's job with the rest of your life.
The downside to this approach is that you won't have quite as much time to work on games.
The upsides to this approach are many:
And if none of that has convinced you, then, although you show an impressive determination to don blinders and avoid the parts of reality that you're not okay with, the unfortunate fact is that those parts of reality are still there (by virtue of being real), and they will operate on your life in a way that is going to leave you in a position that I think we can all agree is likely to be much worse than your many alternatives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw
I don't mean I want to kill my employers and get a job game designing, I was talking about not working in game design at all. I just meant going into animation rather than game design, and focusing on animation, and not killing my employers. You know, Not being a game designer.
And the thing on indie games was a sarcastic take on the fact that I probably won't make a big splash in the game industry because it's not a magical world where my game will get brought by everyone.
And when I say "I'm not exactly diving into it for the money", yeah, I'm considering doing this as a hobby, looking for other ways to make money that are interesting to me!
Now I'm just explaining myself to try and compensate for what I think is just a lapse in understanding...
That video is pretty rad. The guy who made it also teaches at DigiPen Institute of Technology.
If you do go to school, then be careful where you go. Look for placement rates, not just getting jobs, but where those jobs are and what the employees are doing. There is a big difference between a game programmer and a game tester, and some schools consider it success when their game DESIGN students, test. There is also a huge difference in pay.
My recommendation is to research some companies you would like to work for, look for specific jobs you would like to do. I would also recommend checking out DigiPen. It has been around longer than most/all other schools in the field, is located next to Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, Bungie, Valve, and about 150 other game studios. Here are some relevant articles and links.
Valve Hires DigiPen Game Team
Narbacular Drop --> Portal
www.digipen.edu
Examples of student work at DigiPen
Alot of my friends talk about game maker 8 and Unity and such, which I'm less than enthusiastic about, but I'm starting to think it's not so bad an idea, just to get some of those littler, more generic games out. Side scrollers and the sort, but I wonder if I can make them looked polished. Though polish isn't all so important to start with, I'm worrid about hitting dead ends eventually.
If I learn Game Maker 8, lets say, then find a point that I can't continue, is switching to C++ like starting from scratch?
If you're new to programming, start with an approachable language. It's easy to transfer programming skills from one language to another, so you want to ensure that you learn in an environment where you go from code to running programs as quickly as possible. I'd venture to say that you'd be better at C++ in a year on your spare time if you did six months in Python and six months in C++ than if you did a year in C++.
As Seol said, C# is an excellent language to start with, doubly so with XNA. I found the "For Dummies" book to be excellent. Another recommendation is Nick Gravelyn's Tile Engine tutorials for XNA .
Now, I'm not sure if you're more interested in the programming side or the artistic side (I've seen a little bit of both here), but now is a good time to pick. Like others have said, if you're going to study do it in a more traditional field, such as animation or CS.
As soon as your skills are at least at an amateur level join a group. There's teams starting projects all the time, and even though your first few are probably going to fail you will gain plenty of experience.
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I've never been part of the video game industry, but from what I hear every time these threads pop up, it sounds like it's the computer game buyer who benefits the most from the story of the game, while relatively few people working on the game really get to direct/decide on the story to be portrayed in the game. Be honest with yourself about what you want; if you really enjoy "dreaming up those worlds", will you be happy slogging away in a job that doesn't involve anything like that, just because it's tangibly related to video games?
So... Yeah, I enjoy animation as is. So I can't imagine myself enjoying it much less if I'm... well... making money off it.
Bright-eyed optimism is great, but you have to at least be aware of the lackluster side.
I interviewed this artist recently, and before he got into painting as his primary job he wanted to be in computer design and animation for Hollywood movies. He got his foot in the door and worked on Last Action Hero and Free Willy! Pretty exciting, right?
In Last Action Hero he was on a team of people who were tasked with animating a segment of the opening credits to have it fade in from black in a way that was different than the way movies previously had faded in from black. In Free Willy he was on a team of people who were tasked with making it so dorsal fins looked more upright and happy. He was uncredited in both projects. He hated being assigned these projects with hardly any ability to implement his own creative thoughts, and he got out of the field and eventually ended up painting for a living.
This isn't an attempt to break your spirits, but it's worth knowing that there is stuff in your field that is nowhere near as exciting as you're imagining. The key is to be passionate enough to endure it while you get enough experience and connections to get to the good stuff. Eye on the prize and all that.
That should give you a decent idea of both animating and programming, as you can animate whatever as an art form, and then learn a bit of the programming as far as things like buttons, preloaders, rewind, etc. I know there are tons of tutorials on that, and you can get a free 30 day trial from Adobe themselves to test it out.
I researched animation for a really long time before I was able to get my greedy hands on flash professional and a tablet. (Like... since the 90's) So I get that there are menial things to be done. I didn't know that the artists of those menial things went uncredited though. If I'm making enough money to survive (and I do hope there's atleast enough money to survive) then heck yeah I'll make a scene fade out or do the opening 2D animation for a comedy movie.
I only really am lost with the programming. It's a whole other world, I'm finding out.
Edit - Fixed some godawful grammar
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