Games Design Courses – Are they worth it?
Disclaimer: Everything here is of my own opinion and do not necessarily represent any other party’s views.
Note: When I refer to game developers, this means I am referring to everyone involved in the development of the game such as programmers, artists, producers, designers, etc.
There has been increasingly more enquires about becoming a games developer in forums related to games careers such as the ones on IGDA and GameCareerGuide. As much as I am happy that more and more people are interested in entering the games industry, the majority of these are asking on how they become a games designer and which games design course should they choose because they naturally see it as the best way to get into the industry. After all, if you want to be a plumber, you do a plumbing course. So if you want to be games designer, you do a games design course, right?
If only it was that simple.
There are a number of reasons why I don’t recommend doing a games design course and to be honest, they have more to do with the industry then actual courses themselves.
Games design is hugely unspecific in industry compared to other roles available, what a designer does can differ from company to company or even on a team to team basis. While I tend to find that they agree in principle of their responsibilities, the actual specifics of what they actually do and the skills needed are often disputed. This in turn makes it extremely difficult to create a list of skills needed for the games designers compared to programmers or artists where the role is well defined which in turn makes it difficult to create a course curriculum.
To compensate for this, design courses will teach a bit of every discipline which is usually programming, modelling, animation and level design or a subset of these. While I agree that some knowledge in a number of these disciplines is useful for any games developer and works well for a designer where the role is not well defined, the level of that knowledge is usually relatively low compared to studying an entire course in one of those disciplines which leads to the next problem.
Games design is a narrow field and the skills you learn on these courses and not easily transferable to other industries or professions. Additionally, game designers only make up a small number on each team and in my experience it usually 1 designer to every 10-15 developers. This means that there are comparatively very few roles available already before we even start looking at junior or graduate roles for design and the skills learned in the other disciplines isn’t at a high enough level for the jobs in those disciplines unless you did a lot of self study.
In short, if you can’t find a game design job after the course, what can you do instead with what the course has taught you that you couldn’t have done yourself without it? Ultimately, that is the question of any education you plan to undertake to ensure that it is worth the time and money.
The flipside of this is although I recommend not during a game design course, I actually don’t know what to recommend instead that is relevant and also teaches transferable skills. I am still researching into this and was wondering if there was something that the industry could do to help and funnily enough, Skillset have just announced a Games Design Accreditation Initiative so it will be interesting what comes out of this.
If you are looking at doing game design as a career, be sure to research into the role and the methods of getting into it. Useful links:
As one of the many that will be competing for a game dev job in the future, let me add in my impression.
Game development, particularly design, is a very sought after position. Because of this, you are competing with a large number of people; more than the amount of game dev jobs available.
To get such a highly sought after job, you have to prove you’re more capable than the competition. This boils down to being the most devoted person that is willing to learn and demonstrate all skills necessary.
The true prerequisite is *long-term passion towards making games, which is not degree-specific.
*When I say this, I mean that in the sense where you’re motivated to go out and make games on your own time.
I think that Quest touched on the most important aspect of being a good designer / developer – passion. If you’re in it because you think it’ll be easy (compared to something else) or for the money, then it’s not the right choice for you.
Currently, I see the same thing happening in the UK in games dev that happened in software development in South Africa – a rumour started. It went something like this: “There’s not enough skilled designers/developers”.
Training institutes perceive this as a gap in the market, throw together a couple of courses, and tout it as the next best thing. They quickly produce a ton of new ‘talent’ and saturate the market with graduates who know the bare minimum to get by.
While it may seem good to expand the industry, it also creates a lot of problems. The industry may not have the capacity to hold the influx of new employees – ie. there aren’t enough jobs available. Companies spend way more time and effort sifting though the rubbish to find the one gem in the pile. ‘Market-related salary’ becomes meaningless because you have a high number of graduates willing (and able) to work for nothing. Essentially, the original need has not been fulfilled – “We need more SKILLED designers/developers.”
However, there are positives. The industry is expanded and the excess of new skills enables more smaller shops to open because the initial human cost is cheaper. It also does enable skilled workers to move into the industry from related industries who may not have been able to before. There are others…
But, I digress and this is quite a long post for a comment – sorry.