Computer Games Technology Course

[kyo_244]

Hi all. I was just wanting some opinions on this so hear goes. I'm just about to enter higher education (yipee ) and theres this new course at a university i found, computer games technology. Basically on graduation you will be able to work in the gaming industry as a programmer or a games developer in one of the big companies i.e. ninty, sony, sega or microsoft. Ultimately getting a career doing something u love is the ideal life but is this the case here? Well has anyone else done anything similar? I mean games are my life and im a true addict but would getting a degree in a program like this be useful or even fun? And is making games just as fun as playing them? Any futere here or should i just stick to bussiness or IT or something and keep gaming as a full-time hobby? What do u reckon? Any comments welcome cheers!

[SubparMario]

Which university is it? There are loads of mickey mouse game degrees going about in addition to a small core of worthwhile ones. None can guarantee you'll get a job, never mind one with the big three! Fun? Dunno. Do you enjoy hard maths and programming? You certainly won't be sitting around playing games.

[kyo_244]

Its at the university of Paisley in Scotland. Apparently one of the graduates is now working with Sony. So how much maths involved would u say it actually is?

[Flabio]

If you can't handle the maths, you won't make a decent games coder regardless of what degree you get.

I always recommend that people who want to be games coders get a normal computer science degree. Two reasons:

1) It's more respected within the games industry than any of the games tech courses
2) It's respected outside the industry.

Point 2 is very important, as not everyone who starts to work in games finds it to be the job they thought it was going to be. Having a qualification that actually means something in the wider world leaves you more options.

[kyo_244]

ok. u guys had any sort of experience in this?

[yosai]

What he said. Also, do you have any programming background? It's unliely that you will get all of the required skills just from a 3 year course.

[MartyG]

There's a lot of maths involved: Trig, Vectors, Matrices, Parametric equations, Complex number theory, calculus, and I'm sure more than I know about.

[kyo_244]

What he said. Also, do you have any programming background? It's unliely that you will get all of the required skills just from a 3 year course.

Not much, but its a 5 year course including hounours and a 1-year paid sandwich placement.

[kyo_244]

There's a lot of maths involved: Trig, Vectors, Matrices, Parametric equations, Complex number theory, calculus, and I'm sure more than I know about.

youch! maybe something like computer animation or networking would be a bit more practical. My brain don't like too many numbers!!

[Ajay1986]

Trust me if numbers arent your thing programming isnt going to be for you. Takes a lot of experimenting and patietce to do programming in my experience esspecally C++.

[the_dude]

The saying "You need to be good with numbers to be a good programmer" is a complete and utter myth, only programmers say this and make it sound harder than it is! I'm not a very good with numbers, but as a Web Developer/Designer i do a lot of programming in Java (the only OOP language here), JavaScript, PHP, X/HTML.

The concepts behind one programming language apply's to just about every other i.e. Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, Variables, Arrays, Data Types, Loops, Paramaters, Collision Detection, etc. Once you've learned the concepts of one language it's easy to jump on to another, only the syntax will be different, but the concepts remain the same!

Also, is it the programming side of things you want to do! Or would you prefer to do the modelling part of it!

[SubparMario]

The saying "You need to be good with numbers to be a good programmer" is a complete and utter myth

Let's correct it - "You need to be good with numbers to be a good games programmer"

[MartyG]

Indeed - the concepts behind 3D games programming involve a lot of math.

[the_dude]

Ah, but people don't only play games on consoles! There's games for the Web, Mobile Phone, PDA's, etc. Just because the man does a Computer Games Technology course doesn't mean to say that he's going to end up developing console games. People do such courses and end up developing games for the mediums mentioned above!

[MartyG]

The degree courses are still likely to involve a good deal of math if they are games programming oriented. The best thing to do is work out what it is you want to do, and get the details of what the course you're interested in actually involves.