Help on Game Development

[ashishlijhara]

Hey people, I am in need of some guidance related to the best game development schools in Canada, US and Germany. The course that I am interested is specialization in game programming but would like the course to include an overview of character modeling/designing, level designing, audio processing and concept art.

Help in any sort will be greatly appreciated.

[sula_nebouxi]

Digipen is a pretty widely known school that covers most of that. I think they're mostly about game design though and not so much algorithms and pure computer science. I bet they'd have courses on it though. I'd look into that...I don't know much about it myself. The school is in Redmond, WA and has a pretty good relationship with Nintendo and Microsoft.

[Metalclay]

Yeah, digipen has a pretty good rep in the game biz, at least with Nintendo. Not too sure now that Nintendo sold it's lot in Seattle to Microsoft to move down to Silicon Valley.

From an interview with a digipen professor held on Nintendo's Forums on live chat in Camp Hyrule, they really stress draftsman ship. Sadly I do not have the interview log on me, but when asked at the end what recommendation this professor could give to aspiring game developers was: "draw, draw, draw...did I mention draw?".

So, you can see the emphasis on that. Really though, you have to pick what you want to do. I see some of these game developers hired for the coding of the actual game and they got masters in computer science, c++, python, and the lot, nothing in "game arts" or "game development", they're just hard core programmers who have an affinity for art and love gaming.

don't speak from experience, but...from what I've read, that seems to be the case. Heh, dunno but digipen seems to be good, and...c'mon the people who brought us portal came from that school and brought us not just an awesome game, but opened the door for "epic short games".

Also, you can try instead of going the hardcore scripting way, go the artsy way and get an internship or something at EA or maybe even Steam. That should definitely propel you into the game development industry, even if all you're doing is the concept art for the games (which in itself...does require knowledge in what the game developers do with your art).

Here are some interesting videos from the people who brought one of my favorite rts':

http://www.warhammeronline.com/podcast/index.php

check out podcast #4. all of them are pretty darn interesting, but #4 really has the meat on what's what when it comes to game design.

eh, that's as much as I know. Haven't really researched it much since I'm kinda more interested in animation and film so...hope it helped.

[Meloncov]

My impression is that the vast majority of game programmers just have a generic computer science degree. If you want to dabble in art as well, find a school that also has a decent art program.