College Degrees and the Game Industry

http://game-engineering.blogspot.com/2008/08/difference-between-pros-and-amateurs.html

Do you need a college degree to get into the games industry?

No. But...

Is it helpful? Hmm. It might be helpful but definitely not required. I know a number of good programmers that don't have college degrees -- one is a programmer in the financial industry. Most dropped out, one left after a clerical error meant he had to take a year off. He spent that year working at a studio headed by one of the most-recognized names in game design.

Do you really want to work in the games industry anyway? It means long hours, with no creative input, and no job stability -- in exchange for working on games. Work is still work; you still have to show up every day and put in hours debugging someone else's code and working with poorly documented 3rd-party libraries.

I've left the games industry to be an indie developer, in my spare time. I have a day job in the normal tech industry, which pays much better, has more job stability, and requires fewer hours. No all-nighters, no all-weekenders, no six months of crunch time.

Greg Costikyan's article Death to the Games Industry brings up some important points about the iniquities in the industry -- as he does also on his blog. Hmm, in fact, his GDC rant is described as "on the iniquities of the game industry".

In short, the business of the games industry is set up so that the vast majority of the profit goes to publishers and company owners, and a vanishingly small amount goes to the line programmers, artists, designers, musicians, and writers. You'll never get rich by joining the game industry proper, nor are you likely to achieve much in the way of critical acclaim. The one-man shops from a decade or two ago have gone on to become famous studio heads, but except for the indie and mobile markets one person can't build a game by themselves. Even then you really want to contract out bits like art.

Getting into the industry requires either real job experience (doing something other than java crap for some defunct web startup) or an awesome portfolio. I recommend getting both. Get a non-games job in your field of interest and work on indie projects on the side. Indie distribution is growing, so it's becoming easier for someone to carve out a profitable and self-sustaining niche.

And that brings me to my point: get a college degree not because it will help you get your first job in the games industry, but because you probably don't want to spend your life as a nameless cog at a faceless international entertainment conglomerate. Maybe you'll do games for a few years and then want out. Or maybe you want to pursue this indie, spare-time route. If you're young and have free time that you'd otherwise give (for free) to a game company, spend it on your own pet project. You'll own it, it'll be a great resume addition when you do decide to move into the games industry, and hopefully the industry will grow to support indie games.

If you really do want to get a job in the games industry, then definitely prepare a serious demo. I talked about the big difference between pros and amateurs in a previous post; if you act like a pro when you're not yet in the industry, your application will be much more impressive.

College is not for preparing yourself to work in industry. Computer science is something academics and researchers do; programmers are more like engineers or craftsmen, not scientists. Go to college for the beer, being well-rounded, joining a fraternity, and meeting babes. For all that, it's definitely worth it.