<p>Math also helps in modeling things, like hair and fabric, that a video game has to render.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The downside being that you live a life as happy as Grumpy Cat because of all the awful interfaces and bad products out there :)</p>
<p>I’m a software engineer / human factors engineer / avid gamer and there’s little chance I’d send anyone to a specific game design type career. Focus on CompSci on the engine part, or focus on the creative arts part… But the game industry is not where the jobs are…</p>
<p>20 year gaming industry vet.</p>
<p>I have hired over 50 designers in the past 8 years. I will most likely never hire a “pure” designer again. I instead look at CS grads with an obvious passion for design. I then test them for game knowledge, collaboration skills and creativity. I like these “hybrids” because they can code their ideas rapidly and can work better with the team’s primary programmers. I usually find these CS grad / designers at gaming programs (e.g. Digipen, Fullsail, CMU, USC, along with the odd MIT, Stanford, UT Austin grad). Plus, if times are tight, you can always fall back on your CS degree to pay the bills.</p>
<p>Much like “word processing” was a rare/valuable skill back in the 80’s, a skill that is now just expected of everyone, I strongly believe coding will be a required skill in the very near future.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t care where you went to school, but I do care that you graduated, with 3.0 or higher (hints at a good work ethic).</p>
<p>I also care about:</p>
<ul>
<li>you can code, even if you just want to design, knowing how code makes your designs more implementable</li>
<li>you have several, interesting side-projects, this tells me more about you than anything else</li>
<li>you know past and current games and can deconstruct them</li>
<li>you can work in a team</li>
</ul>
<p>FWIW - All of this advice is from a college dropout, who was lucky to have cool parents that let him follow his dreams, rather than stay in school to become an corporate attorney. God help me if my children try ask that of me. ;)</p>
<p>As far as jobs go, it is hard to get a job with a big company doing high-end consoles, but there has never been a better time for 2-3 people to form a small indie company and get something out on mobile and make some quick (and large) profits.</p>
<p>Last, I am a co-owner of a small ~20 person company, mostly to ensure I had a job… ;)</p>
<p>-psy</p>
<p>Ps. One caveat - all of this advice goes out the window if you can show off a hot demo of a compelling game…</p>
<p>Psywar:</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>What about other game design programs that are interdisciplinary such as at Rensselaer and Miami of Ohio?</p>
<p>@psywar, great post, thank you for sharing.</p>
<p>Son is considering a computer game science degree (computer science += game). He would like to be a designer, recently started a game review blog. But he realizes making a living is important as his parents told him that he cannot free load here forever. He will try for game design, if not, game programming, if not there are plenty of programming jobs out there. He can work on consumer/enterprise apps like his parents.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth:</p>
<p>The Princeton Reviews Top 15 Undergraduate Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2013″ are:</p>
<p>University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, WA)
Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA)
Shawnee State University (Portsmouth, OH)
Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA)
The Art Institute of Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia / CAN)
Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY)
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA)
Becker College (Worcester, MA)
New England Institute of Technology (East Greenwich, RI)
North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)</p>
<p>The Princeton Reviews Top 15 Graduate Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2013″ are:</p>
<p>University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)
Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA)
Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)
University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL)
DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, WA)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)
Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA)
Southern Methodist University (Plano, TX)
The University of Texas at Dallas (Richardson, TX)
New York University / NYU-POLY (New York, NY)
Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)
Parsons The New School for Design (New York, NY)
DePaul University (Chicago, IL)</p>
<p>Honorable Mentions Undergraduate Schools (alpha order):</p>
<p>Bradley University (Peoria, IL)
Champlain College (Burlington, VT)
DePaul University (Chicago, IL)
Ferris State University (Grand Rapids, MI)
Full Sail University (Winter Park, FL)
Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)
Miami University (Oxford, OH)
New York University / NYU-POLY (New York, NY)
Northeastern University (Boston, MA)
Oklahoma Christian University (Edmond, OK)
Quinnipiac University (Hamden, CT)
University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)
The University of Texas at Dallas (Richardson, TX)
University of Wisconsin Stout (Menomonie, WI)
Vancouver Film School (Vancouver, British Columbia / CANADA)</p>
<p>Honorable Mentions Graduate Schools (alpha order):</p>
<p>Full Sail University (Winter Park, FL)
Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI)
Sacred Heart University (Fairfield, CT)
University at Buffalo (Buffalo, NY)
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA)</p>
<p>Realizing that my H graduated in the “dark ages” of video games, but he has a BS in Computer Science (minor in English for “storytelling” experience), a MS in Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Human/Computer Engineering (now commonly called User Experience, or UX). He started out (after undergrad) as a coder, went back to school and has worked as a UX designer in several industries, as well as teaching. Interestingly, for UX he has hired people with degrees in industrial design and engineering, as well as psychology. Just another aspect of game design to consider, although most UX depts don’t consider anyone without at least a Masters.</p>
<p>My son currently attends Depaul, and is in the Computer Gaming program w/ a concentration in Gameplay programming. He as well wanted a program that included gaming, and not just CS classes.</p>
<p>We looked at U Mich ( 45 mins away but strictly CS), Case Western, Drexel, Miami of Ohio, Renssylaer and Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>He chose Depaul due to location (Chicago!) their 5 year masters program, and he got great merit aid!</p>
<p>According to my S, kids are being hired from the program by gaming companies.</p>
<p>@psywar Do people in the industry prefer Full Sail and Digipen graduates compared to colleges that don’t revolve around specific topics? I’ve heard very mixed reviews of them, especially since they’re not regionally accredited, which can be a problem if a kid wants to go to grad school later or decides the college isn’t for them after a year. (Can be hard or impossible to transfer credits.)</p>
<p>hi scooter11…was glad to see your post and to hear more about your son’s experience at DePaul. We just visited DREXEL with our son interested in the same program. I honestly didn’t think he would like the “city” enviroment and we were pleasantly surprised. I just know the price tag @ Drexel will be wayyyy out of reach. We had been to Chicago and loved it. Maybe we should consider DePaul. Would you say it compares very much to Drexel? Was location the only reason you decided against Miami?
I’m glad to see you said they were generous with aid. Perhaps you can share more about that…if you could pm me I would be grateful…I don’t have enough posts yet to do so 
Thanks!</p>
<p>Our son just accepted admission into the CS program at Miami (Honors) with the intent to also do the Digital Game Studies minor. The latter is run through their Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies (AIMS). We’ve visited the campus (which is gorgeous) twice and were struck by a few things:
a) The school has multiple advisory structures, including honors, a general academic advisor, a departmental advisor (CS) and even a minor advisor if you identify for one (gaming).
b) The AIMS center was interesting - we’ve also visited Drexel, we’ve seen DePaul (we live in suburban Chicago), we’ve seen Penn’s programs (which are really animation oriented rather than gaming), and Johns Hopkins (which surprisingly has a Video Game concentration in their CS department). Despite good grades with very challenging courses and being a NMF and getting a 34 ACT, he didn’t get into most of the schools he applied to (he didn’t apply to Drexel or DePaul). But Miami Honors is a pretty sweet fallback, plus he got good merit aid. AIMS also has a “CAVE” which is an immersive video display/interface device that they also have one of here, at UIC. It really looks like Miami is putting serious money behind the AIMS program.
c) Unlike schools like RPI, GTech, etc., Miami really seemed to us more like a liberal arts college with the resources of a big state U. Our S really wanted the well-rounded education, including foreign languages, writing, theater, etc., which most of the more purely tech or voc-ed oriented schools (Drexel) either don’t have or don’t have in good quality or quantity.
d) AIMS also has a nifty summer program in San Francisco for gaming and digital media. It’s pretty new but really looks like a good program and the university is front-paging it in their advertising of the different kinds of cool things that Miami offers.
Note to MQD; our S is also on the spectrum. We’d had an aspie diagnosis for a long time, with an IEP in middle school, but his has softened some and we really feel he’s closer to being hyperlexic. Nonetheless many of your comments in the Parents Forum and elsewhere really hit close to home.
Bottom line: We feel like he’ll get a solid, well-rounded education in CS and game design at Miami, and it will prepare him well for grad school (which he wants) and for life, not just in terms of getting a first job but having the other skills to advance and/or have his own company (which he already does, bicobalt.com).</p>
<p>to tpcrd66, I thought Becker was pretty generous with aid, more so than Monmouth, who didn’t specifically have the program. going back to Becker next Friday but looks like it is in the lead right now. Still on the waiting list for Drexel, but that will be costly if he gets in. also his friend got a full ride to becker.</p>
<p>Ericd1112: My H worked on the original CAVE at UIC back in the 90s when he was working on his PhD. They’ve come a long way! And my son just turned down Miami for undergrad. It was a close contender and a great school. Being able to visit him in January was a great incentive for me!</p>
<p>ericd1112…thank you for the incredible overview! We must check out Miami! It will be a plane ride or 10 hour drive…but sounds like worth the investment. May I ask what was your son’s second choice?</p>
<p>hazeleyedgirl, That is encouraging news! Please post how the next visit goes…we go the following week. May I ask what school is in second place? Good luck!</p>
<p>I wanted to ask the group’s advice on HS summer programs for computer game development.</p>
<p>DS and I are evaluating and deciding between
Rensselaer Polytechnic institute
Carnegie Mellon university
COSMOS at UC Santa Cruz (awaiting whether selected)</p>
<p>Which one the choose? Thoughts? Thanks!!</p>
<p>I don’t have experience with those, but we have lots of experience with DigiPen if anyone is interested.</p>
<p>Finally some real data!</p>
<p>I bought the May 2013 issue of PCGamer which provided a bit more detail about the game design schools ranked by Princeton Review and PcGamer. The UG list had number of classes and % of faculty who had game company experience with a short 2 sentence descriptor of the program. They did not provide job information. Disappointing really.</p>
<p>The best information was provided only for the GRADUATE programs. The % of graduate students who had jobs when they graduated. Here is the list. The schools are listed by overall ranking.</p>
<p>This might say something about the value of the undergraduate degree??</p>
<p>Graduate programs and % employed in game development at graduation.</p>
<ol>
<li>USC - 100%</li>
<li>Utah - 100%</li>
<li>Drexel - 80%</li>
<li>RIT - 100%</li>
<li>U of Central Florida - 89%</li>
<li>Digipen- 75%</li>
<li>MIT - 35%</li>
<li>UCSC - 82%</li>
<li>Savannah - 87%</li>
<li>SMU - 66%</li>
<li>UT Dallas - 15%</li>
<li>NYU - N/A</li>
<li>Georgia Tech - 20%</li>
<li>Parsons - 90%</li>
<li>DePaul - 13%</li>
</ol>
<p>But how many of the students in the graduate programs are already working in the game industry and are doing the master’s degree program paid for by their employers who will continue to employ them after they complete their master’s degrees?</p>
<p>This is all that was offered. Rochesters claim to fame for undergraduate is that their students have 100% employment at the time of graduation. This is an outcome of a solid co-op program. </p>
<p>Would gaming companies spend the time and money to send people to school when they have so many people waiting in the wings for jobs? I would think they value on the job training the most. I am sure there are some graduate students sponsored by companies but in any industry it usually is not many these days unless it is an evening MBA program. </p>
<p>UCB: Do you have other knowledge?</p>
<p>These numbers are great for comparing and also points out that the programs are not all the same so generalizations can not hold. I was quite surprised to see MIT students in the 30s.</p>