Worry over academic Game Dev degrees: Students misled? |
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The Queensland University of Technology's IT faculty fears that the misinformation is due to a catchy course title - Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment. Dean of information technology Simon Kaplan explains:
One of our terrible fears is that we're going to have this cohort of students who imagine that they're going to be allowed to play games 50 hours a week for three years and then be handed a degree... This is something that terrifies us because computer games at university is no more about playing computer games than aeronautics is about flying fighter jets.
Professor Kaplan worries that once classes begin, student interest might decline. He worries about the possible attrition rate especially given that more than 700 people applied for the 163 places on the QUT degree.
There are signs though that the students do know what they're getting into. Douglas Cook, who passed up a chance to study law or medicine, had this to say about choice after he won a scholarship for the course:
I could have possibly been a doctor or lawyer (but) I just wanted to do something with my life that I would enjoy for a long time, I've always loved playing games and I just thought the next best step was to be making them for a living. I would prefer to create them myself.
However, as optimistic as a lot of students might be, Professor Kaplan does have something to note about the demands of the games industry. "They're not looking for an average programmer," he said. "They're looking for the superstar designers and animators."
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Comments [refresh]
***** school, buncha *****ing slaves.
just don't spit in my food when you're working at McDonalds.
There is nothing wrong with learning, it's what you do with it after that counts.....if you go work for a coroporation, then ya, your a slave....but if you pursue more independant goals and like minded groups, you could put that knowledge to good use....
I always laughed at those commercials that portrayed game design as sitting in front of a huge TV playing video games, pushing buttons on a soundboard, and saying "We need to tighten up the graphics on level 3," followed by the "boss" saying "Well hurry up, I still have 3 games for you to test!" Programing games != playing games, anyone who doesn't know that, and falls for it deserves to have their money wasted and drop out.
Well not only am I an Australian, living in Melbourne, but im also vying to get into an RMIT game development course -as a concept artist and 3D moddler.
LoL thanks to my strick-ass school - and heavy workload im quite aware im not going to be loafing around playing games if I do the course lol. I`ll me too busy using 3D max and modding UT04 ;)
"I could have possibly been a doctor or lawyer (but) I just wanted to do something with my life that I would enjoy for a long time, I've always loved playing games and I just thought the next best step was to be making them for a living. I would prefer to create them myself."
How does this sound like he has no idea what he's getting into? And beyond that, he's smart enough that he won a scholarship for it. He's not confused at all.
The article even says they are only taking the best and brightest... These are not the kind of idiots that think you can get a degree playing video games.
No, it's not the University worrying about this. It's the article writer.