People can learn from the web. But many people like structured curriculums with homework, projects, questions and the alike. And the point of this thread is not to bash or criticize anyone who does or doesn't prefer that method. The point however is just to say, "Hey, if you really want some like that, you should check out X school or Y program." Given the availabilty out there with DigiPen, Full Sail, GameInstitute, and some other free online courses. What would you recommend?
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Is there a Game Programming school that you would suggest?
For programmers, I like none of them.
I have worked with a few people who have gone to game schools in the past. Most of these people have been just fine in some aspects, but do not work well in the broad range of software development. Most of them no longer work here.
And then the one exception I know. He is a pretty good programmer, but he just got bit by the fact that he went to a game school. He wants to get into graduate school in computer science. He was accepted a few months ago. Then the school un-accepted him because they checked in to his history, and Digipen did not have national accreditation. He appealed, and after review the CS department said they could not accept Digipen's regionally-accredited trade degree as the background for a CS graduate degree.
I recommend a traditional CS degree from a nationally accredited school. You can become a game programmer with that degree. If you fall upon hard times and cannot get a job as a game programmer, or if you decide you want to try something outside of game programming a traditional CS degree will work just fine.
As my co-worker just discovered, although a game school degree can help you get a job in the game industry, a game degree won't cut it if you try to spread your wings anywhere else.
100% agree with frob.
I'd also add that most game schools are really expensive compared to your average state school.
edit: to give some scope, I went to Digipen for 1 semester, and it is something like half of my university debt despite being 1/8th of my time.
I'm with frob on this one.
Game schools generally offer a breadth of subject matter related to games, but a woefully inadequate degree of depth in any particular subject. They also tend to deprive students of broad exposure to things outside of games, which I personally feel is a shame.
The people I've seen who are good programmers who went to game schools generally tend to be good in spite of their schooling background.
Traditional CS routes are more valuable for learning IMO, and there are good offerings available online, such as Stanford and MIT's programs.
Game schools generally offer a breadth of subject matter related to games, but a woefully inadequate degree of depth in any particular subject. They also tend to deprive students of broad exposure to things outside of games, which I personally feel is a shame.
The people I've seen who are good programmers who went to game schools generally tend to be good in spite of their schooling background.
Traditional CS routes are more valuable for learning IMO, and there are good offerings available online, such as Stanford and MIT's programs.
Well as far as free online courses go (which I mention in the OP), the HTML5 Game Development course on Udacity is interesting. I just started it.
Game schools generally offer a breadth of subject matter related to games,
Yeah..... that's the point. Obviously, I'm not asking what Game Programming school is good for learning about General Programming.....
I can say that at one point Full-Sail students were not getting accepted at EA sports Orlando for certain teams (not sure if it was the whole studio). They just weren't interviewing very well. I work there, my Lead went to Full-Sail and hes been the lead on 2 of my teams, when I came in there were 2 other fulltime and 1 contractor from FullSail, we just hired someone else that came from DigiPen recently as well. I came in a a "try them out" contractor, me and another guy from Full-Sail were the only 2 / 5 contractors to get full-time after that due to good performance.
People can graduate from any school and suck. I had people from DigiPen that I don't think were very smart get through. What I can say though is that DigiPen does teach CS and I don't get where anyone is coming from on this. I worked in the medical field on software. Software is software. You might not learn the most web technologies and you certainly aren't going to just be a Java guy, but I think the really good people coming out of DigiPen are way smarter than a traditional CS degree.
My friend from DigiPen went to a couple places and both places now are like "why the F did we never look at graduates from this school". My current problem with DigiPen, way too expensive. CS though is the one degree there are resources everywhere to boost your growth. You can learn so much stuff in your personal time.
I would suggest against DigiPen only due to the cost of tuition there nowadays. It's insane. If you go to traditional CS, just stay up on C++ and make some games in your own time. Your own ambition will get you somewhere.
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