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Full Sail University?
tehkensai
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Im looking into colleges/universities down in florida and I am interested in Full Sail-Ive read student reviews about certain aspects of the college and it seems about 50/50...but you can never be too sure. Especially with how much it costs-very expensive.
I am considering going there(online) for the Game Design degree they have, since every other school Ive checked out with a game-centric them for a major is...well, subpar.
Does anyone have any experience with full sail? Bad, good?
Also:
*If full sail doesnt work, Im probably going to go to UCF, which is pretty close-Need to get the hell out of ohio. Our primary export is crippling depression.
*I'm in the Ohio National Guard right now(deployed to egypt..ugh) but I am going to have to transfer to the florida guard before I start going to school. Does anyone here have experience with the florida national guard/or has anyone transferred between guard units? Any advice would be appreciated.
*Also, anything I should know about Orlando?
I am considering going there(online) for the Game Design degree they have, since every other school Ive checked out with a game-centric them for a major is...well, subpar.
Does anyone have any experience with full sail? Bad, good?
Also:
*If full sail doesnt work, Im probably going to go to UCF, which is pretty close-Need to get the hell out of ohio. Our primary export is crippling depression.
*I'm in the Ohio National Guard right now(deployed to egypt..ugh) but I am going to have to transfer to the florida guard before I start going to school. Does anyone here have experience with the florida national guard/or has anyone transferred between guard units? Any advice would be appreciated.
*Also, anything I should know about Orlando?
tehkensai on
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They treat their students poorly, ridiculous class hours, twilight hour final exams, and incredibly high tuition. Then they get dumped into EA Orlando where they make 9 bucks an hour testing Nascar 09 until their eyes bleed.
The best thing you can possibly do at this point is wait for Dr. Frylock to show up here because he's got a mountain of advice on this subject and all of it is A+.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I've also had mixed experiences with UCF but wouldn't say it was all bad.
If you go to Full Sail for a degree, then get the fuck out of Dodge when you graduate.
My vote is on UCF, though that may change depending on your funding options. I don't know anything about how the military funds college, but what is the guard willing to put into your education? Are there any limits on where you go?
I'd figure out what field you want to be in, programming, writing, graphics, etc, and just get a good general degree in that field, and make games the subject of all your projects/free time.
Appreciate the advice! I was leaning towards UCF for the most part, but I wanted to see if anyone here had some experience with full sail, etc.
The guard in Ohio pays 100% tuition for state schools and the equivalent to private schools, I'm not sure about florida. I'd be using financial aid to fill in the other spots if needed. I also get the montgomery G.I. Bill which is about 500 a month for me, which is great-not sure if its the same in florida, though.
appreciate all the advice.
That said, here's the deal. At Full Sail (as others have said), you get out of it what you put into it. ONLY attend if you are completely serious about wanting to learn. The class hours are ridiculous, as you've noticed, but you move at a very accelerated pace. You need to give yourself completely over to the school if you're going to attend, and you need to be on your A-game constantly.
Full Sail will let in just about anyone who applies and has the money. The flip side of this is that most of the teachers who work at Full Sail REALLY know there stuff. Now, I mainly researched their graphic arts and 3D programs, but I've heard it's the same in their other programs -- they get people directly from the industry who really know their stuff. Not only do they know their stuff, but they have connections in the industry.
All of this is there for you, but there's a problem: Like I said, ANYONE can get in, and a lot of people go and waste a lot of money and just dick around not really trying to do anything but pass their classes. These people are not going to come out well. If you go and you put in the effort, the hours, if you talk to your professors and make connections and really get all of the information you can .. well, if you do that, you're getting more than your money's worth.
So, you really really need to be honest with yourself when you go into this. There's the opportunity to really learn a ton of information and use some really great equipment that they offer while you're there, but you won't get anywhere if you don't have the drive to push for yourself. The school isn't going to offer anything to you, it's really up to you to make the time, talk to your professors and get the experience you're paying for.
That said, there are a lot of other good universities in Florida that you can attend if Full Sail doesn't sound right for you. I don't know if you've been to Florida often, but let me just say this: You WILL want to get out as soon as you finish school. I live here for school now and let me tell you, beyond that, it is simply a black hole where you will have a 10 times more difficult time of finding success in any given career.
Not only that, but when considering UCF you should know that, overall, Orlando is a terrible city (outside of Disney and the theme parks). There's a ton of violent crime there and you're basically situated in the backwoods of Florida. Full Sail is in Winter Park, which is a little more upscale and at least a slightly better section of Orlando.
Edit: Further info on Orlando:
If you're going to go to school in Orlando and live in apartment, GET INSURANCE. A lot of apartments require this in Orlando, but not all of them -- you'll want it.
Also, if you're deployed in Sharm el Sheikh, why complain? You get to take leave at the resorts, right?
Because our leadership is horrible and treats us like three year olds. As usual.
otherwise its not so bad.
Anyway, everyone, thank you all for your advice.
The last thing you want to do is turn yourself into a one trick pony and spend another 4 years going at it again (speaking from experience).
First of all, for truth:
The games industry is very experience-driven and results-driven. It is also very competitive.
As far as Full Sail, I'm immediately suspect at them for offering a "game design" degree. Game design is not a job. True, "computer science" is also not a job, but Full Sail's marketing is entirely centered around "we will get you a job in the games industry." It's a trade school. There is nothing wrong with that, but it means that they should be focused on teaching people the skills necessary to get them a job in the industry.
Nobody has the title of "Game Designer." Miyamoto? Kojima? Cliffy B? Those people have job titles like Executive Producer. AKA "The Boss." AKA "Worked for years making levels, slinging code, making art, and/or writing before I ever got anywhere near designing a game"
The entry-level jobs in the games industry look like "Level Designer," "Programmer," "Artist," "Writer," etc. You want a school that will teach you one of those skills using industry-standard tools and that will leave you with a professional-grade portfolio when you graduate. Nothing else is worth your money.
Also, take a minute to meditate on the games industry. If you first year or two out of college is spent working long hours, getting underpaid for your skill level, and working on Barbie Horse Adventures, would you be happy? What if you are never part of a team that makes a good game (and remember, most games are crap)? If the answer to those are "maaaaaaybe," you also need to consider whether the skills you learn will translate to other industries.
To be a little more constructive, I want to give a shout out to my alma mater and its Arts and Technology program. It wasn't my major, but I worked with many of the students and professors, who generally are smart, motivated, wonderful people doing wonderful work. Alums from the program are working in the games industry doing real, interesting work.
And you'd be paying state school prices.
UT Dallas is a nice place too. It's got a very up-and-coming vibe to it. Lots of energy and new programs, lots of change. Oh, and they have one of the best mo-cap facilities in the country. And you get to use it as an undergrad!
Also, so assume you get into Full Sail, you do get said gaming degree and are pretty good. But for some reason, the universe doesn't want you to be a 'game designer' and you don't find a job? Then what? Flippin' Burgers? Trust me, get a general degree in CompSci or Graphical Design, focus your portfolio on games, go to (serious) conventions to build a network, and then move from there.
http://www.fullsail.edu/flash/index.cfm?degree=game-development
Judging by the course list, I would say it's a bit totally wrong to call someone with that degree a one-trick pony, you know, what with needing a ton of skills in different areas to go into making a video game. Its not like they teach a super specific type of secret video game code that only video games use.
Fair enough, I didn't mean it in the sense that he can only do one thing. In that sense, no one is a one trick pony. In my field, we call people who just write on a single subject one trick ponies. You know, like that professor you had who always raved on about his algae in a tiny lake in northern Canada? The one his last 20 papers were on? (And yes, I have known such a person).
When I say one trick pony, I don't mean that he can only do coding, or drawing or whatever. What I mean is that he should be afraid of becoming someone who is completely geared towards one career and one career only.
Huh... I got my CS masters at UTD and never knew this...
The first and foremost one is that for the most part, none of your credits will transfer to any other college in the south. So if you go there for a year and decide that it's bullshit, you're out of luck unless you want to go out of state to find a place that will take the credits.
The other huge one in my mind is the shear competitiveness of the job market. Factor in a bad economy plus everyone and their dog wanting to be a game designer and it makes the odds of your 80-100k degree turning into an enjoyable job pretty slim.
Now, is it impossible? No. I went to a career ed school and got a specialized degree, but I had to work my ass off to *actually* get into the field, and out of 15 or so in the graduating class for that program I'm the only one who's actually employed by a real company to date.
Just make sure that if you go, you have a full proof Plan B that doesn't involve you waiting tables at Chili's for 4 years while you pay off your massive school loans.
The best advice I have ever read on Full Sail is that you'll get much more out of it, career wise, if you already have a legit degree in Computer Science, and treat Full Sail like grad school. And of course, unless your parents are paying you to survive, that's not easy to do.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
It's all about portfolio. It doesn't really matter what degree you have if you have a great portfolio. If your program gives you the tools to make a great portfolio, then you will do well. If it doesn't then you won't. The program I teach at here has a year-long team project where students create games, so they have something for that portfolio. It's also based on a very difficult CS base (harder than the actual CS program if you don't fancy graphics programming) so students have a fallback.
So yes, UCSC is fairly successful at placing people in entry-level games positions, but it's mainly because it's a real university teaching a real degree.
Then he did some thorough research through some buddies of his that actually went there, and they told him how much of a scam it was.
One thing i'd like to point out is that my friend is a top-notch website/graphic designer, and is pretty fucking rocking with photography. He is a renaissance man in every sense of the word, as he can really do it all. So I completely trust in his opinion when he told me to look elsewhere.
Currently i'm enrolled in an animation college in the heart of Toronto, with a tuition roughly half the price of what Full Sail was asking, and teachers that have been in the industry for years. It's a very small school, and like Full Sail they'll accept anyone who has the dedication and money, but unlike FS you'll get weeded out fast if you don't step up by second year. It's not an issue of money, it's a conscious decision that the school has to make.
I would strongly urge you to look for another alternative in place of Full Sail.
Programming is programming.
Take a Computer Science degree and fill up those flexible slots with game dev courses.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
In your free time, program and develop games. Flash, java, C/C++, whatever.
Also consider a second major in math and/or graphic design.
A word of warning: Game Development is typically (not always) long hard hours. If you don't love this stuff, it'll burn you out quick. If you do love it, it'll still burn you out eventually. The pay also seems to be lower across the board compared to "boring" business application development.
In regards to full sail: my friend went there years back for audio. He said it was a rip off; but after he came back he was really amazing at audio work. He was a self-learning though and didn't finish the entire thing.
The game industry is extremely competitive. They can work you longer hours for less money than a comparably-skilled position, just because there's so much competition for the same jobs. And they will.
Ultimately, although playing games is more fun than using, say, business applications, MAKING games is not that much different than making business applications (or embedded software systems, or any number of complex distributed systems). The challenges are similar, the personal rewards are similar, and so on. Plus, as noted above, the pay and hours are probably better in a non-games field. Admittedly you won't be working with people who eat, sleep, and breathe video games, but then again if you go into a career making something other than games there's probably a better chance you'll enjoy playing them outside of work.
Game industry jobs, because they are in such demand, are prestige positions. Game design jobs even moreso. For every one designer, there are probably dozens of programmers, and for every programmer there are 3-5 artists, not to mention a whole gaggle of support staff doing things like translating every string in a title into Korean or scouring the entire thing for references to "drugs" so they can be changed to the somehow less-offensive "chems" for the UK version where they don't allow drug references.
So, saying "I want to go to school to be a game designer" is like saying "I want to go to school to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives" or "I want to go to school to become an NFL player." Although there are things you can do in school to position yourself to be a Congressperson, for example, there's a lot more involved than school, and you can't get a job as a Congressperson right out of school either.
I have no specific firsthand information about Full Sail, but based on the comments I've read I've formulated a hypothesis. For any given profession, school provides a number of years where you can 1) focus on your chosen profession without the demands of a workaday job and 2) meet and interact with people who care about the same things that you do. It should be unsurprising that if you are serious about doing both of these things you can succeed at Full Sail - if you are serious about these things you can succeed anywhere.
In college, I knew many people who focused and networked. They did not limit their learning time to inside the classroom: they worked part time jobs in their field during school, they always pursued internships, and they learned on their own. These people are all doing quite well.
Many, if not most of the people I went with figured that school was there to teach them everything they needed to know inside the classroom, and so the time outside the classroom was their own to do...whatever (usually just screwing around). These people did not do so well. College is this excellent opportunity to learn in a relatively safe, pressure-free environment. The difference between a "good" college program and a not-so-good one is probably 1) the resources available for someone to take advantage of and 2) the availability of equally motivated people with whom to collaborate and network.
In my experience, whether or not a student took advantage of the college opportunity was much, much more important in their future success than how good their college was supposed to be to begin with.
Also know that there's a difference between a degree in Game Design/Development/Art and a degree in, say, Computer Science. You don't yet see the hallmarks of a real baccalaureate education in the gaming field: a research program, research universities granting PhDs in the field, peer-reviewed journals, academic conferences (not tradeshows) and so on. Without these things, an educational course of study is primarily either 1) vocational or 2) artistic. There's nothing wrong with vocational or artistic education at all, but there's a difference between a car mechanic and a mechanical engineer. Both are extremely valuable - just don't get them confused.
My advice for anyone going to college is to take on as much abstraction as 1) you can handle, and 2) is valuable for your career. You will have plenty of time to learn individual skills while you're working, but you almost never have time to go back and learn fundamentals. I have met some people who have been employed as software developers for decades who make tremendously critical mistakes because while they have 10+ years of skill writing code in some language, they don't have the education to know that their algorithms are inefficient or fragile. They don't understand basic concepts like O-notation and concurrency. During (and right after) school, these things seem really ephemeral and theoretical, right up until they bite you in the ass holding up a $30 million effort 10 years after you still haven't learned them.
Whatever you decide to do, go big. Take advantage of your time at school - don't waste it screwing around. Remember that every minute outside the classroom is an opportunity to learn something that they're not teaching you IN the classroom.
really appreciate all the advice guys. Pretty sure I have all I need to make a decision.
Not exactly Apples-to-Apples, but I imagine a certificate in Game Design would be about as useful.
I got a degree in Digital Media at UCF, and I understand there is a game design focused track, though when I was there it wasn't available. The classes I took made me a jack of all trades, I did a fair share of coding, production, and art. A lot of making websites and web-centric applications, as well as working on a team and dealing with clients. We also learned video and audio editing. At the moment I'm working for a very large corporation doing interface design. So I like the Digital Media program.
UCF also has it's own game centric graduate program you should look in to, FIEA. http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/
I considered it, they have 3 tracks, art, development, and production. It's a 2 year program, and I think it's less expensive than Full Sail, and has a better reputation. They also partner with EA on some things, and they'll hire you upon graduation if you're good enough.
SyphonBlue on these forums went there for production work, he can give you a much better idea - send him a PM. He went and after graduation decided he didn't want to pursue the career, but I think he liked it.
EDIT: Since it sounds like tuition would definitely be covered at UCF, really look in to digital media. You'll learn a lot of skills that can get you a job in a variety of fields.
The best part of my entire college experience was having the privilege of multiple classes with him.
EDIT: Though last time I spoke to him he was a little down, with budget cuts, and some classes that were his entirely (Creativity & Problem Solving) being handed off to other teachers. He mentioned he might be looking for work elsewhere.
Sad, but still, UCF is not a bad choice. And it's not in the terrible areas of Orlando, or downtown.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Pick a state school to go into. Full Sail is a good way to rack up a lifetime of debt with nothing quantitative to show for it.
I attended Full Sail and received a BS in Game Development. I had been programming for 3 years or so before I began school. I was hired at Volition, Inc. as a multiplayer programmer 3 months after I graduated and have now been working there for 2 and a half years. From Full Sail, we have 3 programmers (Game Development degree), 2 artists (Computer Animation degree), 1 designer (Game Development degree), and we had 1 sound designer (Recording Arts degree) but he left recently. There may be more, but that's what I know of.
Frylock knows what he's talking about. The school doesn't turn you into a good developer - that's your job. The school provides you the tools to get better.
As he said, a self-motivated and hardworking person can succeed anywhere, but do I think they'll have a greater chance of making it and going further by going to Full Sail? Yes. Understand, though, that I am *only* speaking on the Game Development degree from the perspective of a programmer. I do not have first-hand knowledge on the other programs, including the Game Design masters.
If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would. There is not a single doubt in my mind that Full Sail improved my career possibilities more than continuing down the same path at a different school or alone.
Full Sail's style as a school is a recipe for failure for people who aren't self-motivated. You're in class 40-48 hours a week, working at home on schoolwork for another 10-20, and if you can't find some more time to work on side projects, I doubt you'll make it. Make no mistake, it is a crucible, but if you make it out to the other side, you'll be steel.