Help:Video Game Degree - Advice for a friend!!

[Locky]

Yep, you should definitely go for a less specialised degree. A mate of mine did systems engineering at uni and is now working for a top games company in London.

[parkinho]

Good post Psi. As a physicist myself, I found the main draw of the course to be the incredible number of options available at the end. I opted for teaching, which I love, but the flexibility provided by the degree is always there for future career changes.

[Eps]

Incredible number of options is right -- I'm certainly not an Oxbridge graduate, but it doesn't seem to matter so much, if at all, in this field. There are people who've come off my course who've done everything from teaching in decent schools to working in nuclear power stations to doing forensics for the police ('forensic science' degree = another waste of time, supposedly) to serving in technical branches of the Armed Forces to working in the City of London for gargantuan salaries (and an absolutely ****, awful quality of life, but that's another debate...) to, yes, working in the entertainment industry! And then there are the real geeks, who choose to become professional physicists. Er, wait..

[bangaio]

Flexibility is the key. People are drawn to the bull **** unis put out. People think at y13 "what will I be able to do with a history degree". I have told y9 kids choosing gcse options to not narrow their choices further down the line - i mean how the **** can a 13/14 year old know what the wnat to do and specialise in it?! Anyway, my answer to say the histor question is how about a city lawyer earning ?90k + a few years out of uni or maybe how about a BBC researcher or an editor for a publisher or maybe a trader or **** knows what, even a plumber - but your degree has taught you useful skills that are looked for by employers world wide. Games degree - please!

[chaoticjelly]

Someone posted a thread a bit like this before and basically I would agree with all of the above, ive been on a games course for the past 2, 3 years and I feel it has been a huge waste of time and cash.

So certainly I cant recommend Liverpool JMU as being one of the top unis for games.. if you had to pick one, I'd probably say Salford, from what ive heard its pretty good, and some of the guys there actually were able to break into the games industry after they got their degrees!

Our course is mainly programming, programming and more programming, with what I would call "filler" lectures, subjects etc in between i.e. very easy stuff like networking etc, some of that stuff was on AS/A level computing exams.

If id of known I would of done Computer Science, which is what I recommend your mate does too! DONT let him make the mistake of going for the specialist degree, they bull them up beyond belief and say you are employable in loads of other areas, but basically its all a load of codswallop.

Lecturers at college used to laugh when I told them what I wanted to study at uni - now I know why, and everytime I read a thread like this I get really gutted.