Anyone currently, or planning to, major in Video game design and knows what colleges they are looking into or already are at? Looking to gather information on different schools and people’s personal opinions on the school and program. Thanks
Why not just major in CS and take additional electives in graphics, AI, creative writing, and art/animation?
Yeah, I’m going to say…don’t major in video game design. I work in the industry. If you want to be on the actual developer side, major in CS, learn to code. The art stuff (particularly 3D art) will be kind of important, too. You can take additional electives in writing if you want, but modern-day games are developed with very large teams of people who do separate jobs: the people who write the code aren’t always (or even usually) the same people who do the line art, write the story/dialogue, etc. They’re often filled by different roles, particularly if you want to work at a big game developer. You don’t have to do everything yourself 
I encourage you to visit the websites for developers and browse some job ads. See what the requirements are for the jobs that sound most appealing to you, and develop those skills. But don’t limit yourself only to schools that have video game design majors. I actually don’t think anyone on any of the teams I’ve worked with majored in that.
I think majoring in video game design is fine, and consider it to be a more practical, less theoretical version of CS. It is tough to make a living doing that kind of work because so many people want to do it, but almost all of the CS/Games-type of degrees I’ve seen teach you enough about programming and computers to allow you to find computing jobs outside the video game industry. I’ve worked with several CS/Games-type grads on non-games applications.
I should revise my phrasing. I meant less “don’t major in video game design” and more “don’t limit your college search only to schools that have video game design majors,” because a major in CS is fine and will get you to your goal the same way or better than a video game design major would. If a college has it, great, but if the otherwise perfect college for you doesn’t, then don’t rule it out.
RIT
@juillet I have a son that just transferred to our local community college (on my insistance) from a school in NYC where he was a CS major. His problem was that he is already very self taught, has been programming since he was 12 and has a published game on Steam. He was frustrated with the lack of peers, bored and hated all of the CS classes that were offered. He took art classes which went nowhere. The school was not known for art, so that went nowhere. He felt it was a waste of time and money and it was like attending elementary school classes on the subject when he was looking for college level experiences. (He is also rather arrogant). So my question is the same as the OP. Its one thing to take CS classes but if you are focused on game design then are there any schools that would take a serious student more seriously or is it really just an experienced based industry?
On a side note- he did look up jobs and job postings. Much to my dismay most of them just required a certain amount of years using certain programs and at least two shipped games. As a mom, I was really hoping there would be some educational requirements on there to enforce my feelings that he should stay in school.