maximaz
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Here is a question for you. What aspect of making games appeals to you the most. Meaning, what do you imagine doing when you imagine working on games.
Should I change my major? (English to Game Design)
- Thread starter Verevoof
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Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Hm... everything? 
I guess when it comes down to it, I'll probably just want to have more focus on narrative and mechanics, gameplay. You know, game design. I'm good in the narrative department, but I should probably take the Game Design and Development course that's being offered. But I'd have to take the prerequisite for the game design class, which is Computer Logic and Design. Wouldn't hurt to take those classes, riiight? 
I guess when it comes down to it, I'll probably just want to have more focus on narrative and mechanics, gameplay. You know, game design. I'm good in the narrative department, but I should probably take the Game Design and Development course that's being offered. But I'd have to take the prerequisite for the game design class, which is Computer Logic and Design. Wouldn't hurt to take those classes, riiight?
maximaz
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Then it's settled. You shall keep your major and take some game design classes. Godspeed.
Hooray! 
I came to the realization earlier today that I'm lazy and a master procrastinator so programming is out of the question. Besides, I'll have an army of programmers at my disposal to do my bidding! 
(Not really)
I shall stay the course. Although it has come to my attention that the Game Design course is only offered in the Fall Term.
I came to the realization earlier today that I'm lazy and a master procrastinator so programming is out of the question. Besides, I'll have an army of programmers at my disposal to do my bidding! (Not really)I shall stay the course. Although it has come to my attention that the Game Design course is only offered in the Fall Term.
D
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They need writers when the make games don'tcha know.
Dopemine Cleric said:
Wouldn't know that by looking at the stuff out now. Ha! lulz
Why Fallout 3 did came out good without those "professinal" writters and intelligent deep meaningfull story which makes sense. A good plot in RPGs is overrated anyway! who needs that when you have gunzz GUNZZZDopemine Cleric said:
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
Yes, it's really correct to say that.SimpleMinded said:
Your contacts, experience, and talent are going to be vastly more important. When you've been out of college for ten years no one will care what your major was. Even the prestige of the college you went to will be more important than what your degree was.
Post-grad degrees are a different story.
Actually, how charming and good-looking you are will probably have as much or more importance than your contacts, experience, and talent.
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
Sure, ten years down the line that's true Universal... but to get to that point ten years down the line where you have strong experience requires the experience right out of college. And I just feel like few people would really jump on candidates who are outside their area with very little background.
I don't know, maybe it's just having come from engineering/computer science fields but I just feel like an englihs candidate would get eaten alive if he applied there out of school.
I don't know, maybe it's just having come from engineering/computer science fields but I just feel like an englihs candidate would get eaten alive if he applied there out of school.
If you want to make games make games. Easy way is learn some basic programming. Take a course on C++(or some other language), buy a c++ book or have a friend teach you. It doesn't take much till you can make a basic text adventure or even roguelike.
SimpleMinded said:
Yeah I'd agree with that, which is why I mentioned medicine, law, engineering as being a little different as they certainly do require an appropriate academic background. But, as UniversalWolf mentioned earlier, it's not an absolute.
But I'd say that most other professions out there are attainable by all sorts of degree holders as long as you make the right moves. I can tell you from personal experience that you'll find people in finance coming from all sorts of academic backgrounds. Myself, a communications and history major, work in an office with people with degrees in philosophy, engineering, and even medicine. The things we do professionally we could only learn by being on the job. The degree helps prove you're a person of decent intelligence capable of learning and applying the knowledge to succeed in a given field. After that you need a combination of connections, non-academic experience, personality, persistence...all that good stuff.
UniversalWolf said:
Oh I'd say that in the U.S. prestige matters more at any time. It always seems that the question of where you attended college outweighs the degree question....well not always...but very often. After 10 years though it's definitely going to be your professional experience and how much you've advanced in your career as opposed to degree or alma mater.
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
Aye that makes sense then. I've always been curious because I'd heard that said so many times, but then I look at my company and I don't see anyone outside of the specific major. But it's likely just the fact that I'm in a specific field so it's shifted my outlook on it.
It definitely takes some stress off then if you're able to find work without your degree serving as the deciding factor.
It definitely takes some stress off then if you're able to find work without your degree serving as the deciding factor.
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
Look at it this way: if there were a 16-year-old kid who had never been to college at all, but authored some fantastic, revolutionary piece of software, that 16-year-old would get job offers well ahead of new graduates with comp-sci degrees. Now replace the 16-year-old with an English major.SimpleMinded said:
Compared to real-world achievement, the degree is insignificant.
Dude, just remember:
Ha! So... how hard would it be to teach yourself programming. That is, if I wanted to (it'll give me something to do over the coming winter break).
TheWesDude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
to learn basic programming in a language does not take very long, to learn advanced programming techniques can take much much longer
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
In thinking about this thread I remembered another friend of mine who graduated college with a double major in English and Chemistry. He promptly decided he wanted to be a programmer, taught himself, and got a series of jobs in the field including debugging code for the US Navy and eventually doing a bit of work on Photoshop for Adobe. Then he decieded he was sick of programming and is now in the process of getting a doctorate in Physics. The thing is, though, he's really, really smart.
But it can be done.
But it can be done.
Dunno. Depends if you like it or not. Everything is more or less "easy" to learn if you really like to do it.Rufus Luccarelli said:
Hence why school can suck so much
Some quick thoughts about the question :
-Enjoying playing games is not all. Being a game designer requires strong intuitions on how games should or could be. If you never had a game project or idea but are waiting for a course to teach you this, you're going the wrong direction
-I read a blog entry from a game designer, stating that a good way to get into game design is to start making games of your own, i.e. learning how to program.
-Programming games does not require to like or enjoy mathematics. Programming is building something concrete, giving you kind of rewards mathematics will never provide you. What it require is a strong sense of logic, an ability to think about abstract problems, and to build theoretical systems. (Like for example, game mechanics)
Really, the only way to know if you'll enjoy it is to try it by yourself.
-The independant way. Basing on your stance on nowadays game productions, join or even start a team of indie developpers, eat pasta for two years and make your own game.
But basically the problem boils down to this : If you really want to design games, you probably already started to design one, at least abstractly. If you didn't, ask yourself why.
Depends a lot on your personality. I learned the basics of C++ in a week or so, and really if you think logically and are used to computers it's really straightforward.
The way would probably to start with a procedural language like C, where you will structure your program in functions.
Then proceed to an object-oriented language like C++ or java, that will introduce the new and useful concept of objects to start organizing code into an architecture.
After you learned an object-oriented language, did some tutorials and played a little with it, the next step is to start reading code.
Maybe try to find a not-to-messy project and see if you can 1) understand some parts of the code and the later 2) make small contributions.
While wandering through the code you'll get a grasp of how a program can be (badly) designed.
While doing this if the interest sticks you can start reading developpers blogs, learn the different ideas and principles that circulate in the programming world, because damn programmers like to fix themselve constraints through laws and principles.
In my case I had the *slight* revelation that I really enjoyed constructing these abstract but yet concrete mechanisms that you see behave the way you tell them to. Like a meccano with infinite possibilities.
-Enjoying playing games is not all. Being a game designer requires strong intuitions on how games should or could be. If you never had a game project or idea but are waiting for a course to teach you this, you're going the wrong direction
-I read a blog entry from a game designer, stating that a good way to get into game design is to start making games of your own, i.e. learning how to program.
-Programming games does not require to like or enjoy mathematics. Programming is building something concrete, giving you kind of rewards mathematics will never provide you. What it require is a strong sense of logic, an ability to think about abstract problems, and to build theoretical systems. (Like for example, game mechanics
)Really, the only way to know if you'll enjoy it is to try it by yourself.
-The independant way. Basing on your stance on nowadays game productions, join or even start a team of indie developpers, eat pasta for two years and make your own game.
But basically the problem boils down to this : If you really want to design games, you probably already started to design one, at least abstractly. If you didn't, ask yourself why.
Rufus Luccarelli said:
Depends a lot on your personality. I learned the basics of C++ in a week or so, and really if you think logically and are used to computers it's really straightforward.
The way would probably to start with a procedural language like C, where you will structure your program in functions.
Then proceed to an object-oriented language like C++ or java, that will introduce the new and useful concept of objects to start organizing code into an architecture.
After you learned an object-oriented language, did some tutorials and played a little with it, the next step is to start reading code.
Maybe try to find a not-to-messy project and see if you can 1) understand some parts of the code and the later 2) make small contributions.
While wandering through the code you'll get a grasp of how a program can be (badly) designed.
While doing this if the interest sticks you can start reading developpers blogs, learn the different ideas and principles that circulate in the programming world, because damn programmers like to fix themselve constraints through laws and principles.
In my case I had the *slight* revelation that I really enjoyed constructing these abstract but yet concrete mechanisms that you see behave the way you tell them to. Like a meccano with infinite possibilities.