Degree or Certificate?
Hey guys I am very new to game design.I am 19 years old,and I just wanted to know which is better between a degree or a certificate and which is more likely to get me a job,I really love games and I have started Learning java and c# but have no clue where to go from there,please if anyone could help me and give me some advice it would be much appreciated.
Comments
I'm not sure what you're looking for a job in - just in general, or in game dev specifically? If it's specifically game dev, then the best way to go about it would be to build actual games (or at least stuff related to games).
Which brings me to my next point : make games. If you want to get into game dev all you need to do is make games. Here is a video I often link to because it was a tremendous help in my own life. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tdwzvdZFxVM
But yeah as far as qualifications go for game dev I don't think it matters that much. I would like to hear what people from free lives, QCF or luma say, but from what I can see most studios just want someone who can do the job.
That is all just my opinion and I am in no position to give out advice so do with that what you will.
Have a nice day,
Kobus
That said, I loved my studies and will advocate being a student as an excellent avenue for personal growth. If you love programming and have your heart set on AAA games then computer science is probably not a bad choice.
Start making things today: Make Tetris in different languages and platforms to see which ones you enjoy the most. Then start making your own stuff. Play around :)
Longer degrees/diplomas tend to put more emphasis on teaching you how to think in the right way, rather than learning specific tools. Once you know how to program and to think, language/tool choice becomes almost inconsequential. You choose the tools according to practical factors, like what your team is most experienced with or what goes with a specific game engine.
Specializing in AI or graphics programming is great, but that's usually only useful for getting into big corporate-ish studios or for academia. In that realm you would need to prove you're good at your specialization, and you'll probably only be doing that for the rest of your life. For example in my degree I specialized in Computer Graphics, but I've had to do all different sorts of programming in the games I have been apart of (not just what I got taught in my degree).
A qualification is definitely not useless, just don't rely on it to get you the job you want. A degree might make it a little easier to get noticed by big companies, but a great portfolio or experience above and beyond will more likely get you the type of job you aim for.
IMHO: Do a degree and always be working on side projects to beef up that portfolio.
I would honestly go for the option of working now. Gaining work experience (any work experience - working with teams, clients, customers ect will be valuable) and tinkering with game maker in your spare time is going to be worth it, I promise.
You don't need a piece of paper to make games, no. Do that as a hobby on the side, use the internet etc.
But if you want to be employed as a professional software engineer (and that's a good way to get production experience or support yourself while making games), you'll need either a good CV with years of experience and solid references, or a decent qualification. The qualification doesn't necessarily mean you're good, but lacking experience, it's the best way employers have of judging whether you have the skillset and the mind for the job. No one is saying you can't get a job without one, but it helps.
I've worked at a number of companies, good companies, where a comp sci degree is a bare minimum for a junior position.
A portfolio is good, yes, but outside of gaming, a portfolio can be a hard thing to judge. Quite frankly, there's a lot of plagiarism online. Did this person write the thing they claimed to write? Hard to tell. I've sat on interview panels judging candidates, you'd be surprised how many just outright copied the answers to the projects we set them off the net. I'm not saying a portfolio is not important, I'm just saying it doesn't override everything else, necessarily.
So yeah. Do a degree, and work on side projects while you do so to give yourself that edge. :)
Hell, I worked for 2 years as a dental assistant while doing my undergrad and that wasn't any waste of time. I learnt to deal with difficult people, manage orders and manage my time well (by doing unisa at the same time). While I never worked in dentistry again, the skills I learnt there have helped me be a better employee at companies that I have worked for since.
1. You say you want to do AAA (Far Cry). You will be competing with people who have degrees AND have a portfolio AND don't have the added stigma of needing to organize a working VISA. If your portfolio and past indie experience is exceptional, you may have a chance but otherwise it's going to be hard.
2. There's typically a fair amount of "down time" at varsity, depending on your aptitude. Even if you don't do a game-focused degree, you will have time to work on things like portfolio projects over those three years anyway. In fact you absolutely should be doing this, just don't let your main coursework suffer as a result :)
3. Right now you don't care about salary and just want to make games. Take it from someone that's been down that road-your priorities change as you get older and you may feel differently at some point. At that stage, having a degree will help you because you'll have a broader background and contacts in other industries (see next point).
4. Varsity is your first opportunity to network with the people that will possibly one day be IT leaders locally. Good to have that network.
If you're facing a 6 month-year delay before you can start a degree, I'd say your best options are:
1. First prize would be an internship at a gamedev studio, but that's unlikely with little education or experience.
2. If you are in a position to not need to work/study for that time (your parents are ok with you doing your own thing, and supporting you), spend it building games. First do some stuff on your own, don't be too ambitious, focus on getting some really small projects finished. Lots of great advice on that already on these forums. Once you have some simple stuff that you can show off, try starting/joining a group of people at a similar point in their careers and work on something bigger (but still realistic). You will not build Far Cry by yourself. You will also not build Far Cry with 4-5 people. Don't even try :)
3. If you can't do either of these, try to find work as a programmer working on anything else. Don't be picky about industry or salary-in fact be prepared to work unpaid. Look at it purely from an educational point of view.
1 they have two application periods per year. The next one will be in around April which means you will only start studying your degree around July next year.
2 UNISA's CSET Faculty has the least external support (there aren't classes or anything of the like you can attend) so this means that it's a rather solitary thing to do. This is fine if the degree is a kind of secondary focus to game development, but if you intend on pursuing the qualification and actually gaining the most you can out of studying then I would really recommend a university that isn't UNISA. This is coming from someone who has studied CS as a regular university and UNISA ;)
Beyond that, and I'm basically repeating things hear, if you want to be working in game dev and seeing as you have C# experience go pick up Unity3D and start working through their tutorials and make some games. And you really should be able to be working from their. While portfolio and games are king there are definitely certain advantages that having a formal CS background will help you with in terms of all game dev programming.
But if you want to be working in AAA a degree is a pretty good way to go and you'll probably want to read this the guy who wrote it is currently working at Ubisoft Montreal and was at IO Interactive.
I too would say that if you have the means to do it, you should try and do a full-time University degree. You don't need a degree to become a great programmer or to create awesome games, but as mentioned by others it will now only teach you core fundamentals but it has the ability to really broaden your horizons, and it can be key if you have aspirations to go work at an overseas game studio one day, as many jobs still have a degree as a prerequisite.
University also offers one other great thing: the chance to be a student! Basically for 3/4 years you have the excuse to spend all your time learning what you are interested in and the opportunity to be very social, without all the responsibilities that typically come later in life. For many their time as a student are the best of their lives, so if you have the chance to do it, it is an opportunity not to be missed :)
Excellent advice from everyone. Just a note from my side. I felt very much the same in not wanting to learn 'general stuff' that 'I'll probably never use'. I just wanted to learn specific things for what I want to do. However, there are two problems that I've seen (both as an employee and employer) with that approach:
1. In the working environment, you get paid to do what the boss wants you to do. So if you don't learn general things, it may prove difficult to find a job that lines up with the nice specific things you want to do.
2. All the candidates that I've seen in the time I've been looking for employee have similar issues. They tended to get qualification that focus on a few specific areas/topics. Which is nice, because they displayed very good knowledge on those topics. But, when the task at hand calls for something related in a different area they had a very tough time coping.
So basically, I would 100% support the rest of the guys saying that a computer science degree is the best move you can make. Yes it will be 'general' and sometimes pretty 'vague' and yes, you won't ever use around 50% (in my case) of what you've learned there. You will, however learn specific ways of thinking about a problem, how to approach a solution and how to implement various solution in a completely non-specific way. And this I believe will give you a great advantage in the market.
As for having to wait for the June intake for Unisa, if you are interested you can PM me and I may be able to assist with some training / part time development work until then.
Best of luck on your studies!
Congrats on trailblazing :)