I wonder how my life would have been in I never discovered games? I wouldn’t be University doing this particular course and perhaps many people would simply scoff at the sheer amount of hours that I’ve “wasted” playing games. Simply put if I was born say 15 years ago I wouldn’t of really had the opportunity to do what I’m doing now, I wouldn’t have been able to put my faith into a university course to teach me the fundamentals of game design.
Game design courses are becoming more and more popular across the county and more tailored courses and campuses are cropping up such as DigiPen, a campus dedicated to creative technology - http://www.digipen.edu/main/Main_Page . Since this a fairly new career the hardest part would perhaps be finding lecturers that have had enough experience in the field to teach young and new hopefuls.
Having is picking Game Design an easy career choice, is it taking the easy way out? Since doing art the attitude that I always received was that it was an easy choice after all drawing is surely easy, right? It’s not like I was doing “real” work such as maths and science. This attitude towards the creative industries in my school such as Art and Graphics ensured that so many students enrolled in those classes expecting an easy ride and once things got that bit harder stopped coming or simply dropped out. It exactly the same with this course I feel, the class started with about 48 and now we are down to just 30? I think that some people thought that they liked playing games and thought it would just been 3 years of doing just that. Once some people figured out that it was a bit harder then they expected they stopped coming.
Now this brings me off the point slightly and might sound a tad superficial but when having my hair cut at the hairdressers they always ask me the same questions, if I am going on holiday and What course I’m doing at University, and for some reason I never say Game Art Design since saying this it just brings a lot more questions and most people simply don’t know what the hell Game Art is. One of the girls thought it entailed making board games and stated that she loved monopoly.
For some reason saying that you’re doing Game Art doesn’t really get as much respect as say doing Graphics simply because it’s such a new course. People just think I’m just doing an “Arty” course, which obviously has no work and no deadlines, yeah right. It’s hard work and time consuming and not just an easy choice. I don’t think that anyone on this course has found it a cakewalk and if they have then they should already be in the industry.
When I look back at starting that god damn wheelie bin and how hard it seemed at the time and take a look at what I’m doing now in comparison then it brings this into perspective, at times I do wish we had a lot more input from the tutors to prepare us for the second year and third however it pushes me to learn it for myself. I just think that with the rise of popularity of gaming over the years that it should be a bit more recognised as a creative industry by now instead as the “fun, slacker choice”.
For example here is the infamous Westwood College advertisment, showing off their game design course in rather bad taste. It’s really badly acted too…just plain awful. LoL tighten up the GRAPHICS a little bit…because making games is just that easy don’t you know.
Game design should start being seen as an educational progress instead of just something recreational. Something that was interesting to read was this article on game courses, at least worth a good read
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/469/innovation_or_vocation_the_.php?page=2
Well this turned more into a rant then a post.
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