[cyb.tachyon]

Let's start by dispelling some myths: No, you will never, EVER, EVER EVER EVER make an MMO game by yourself. Ever. And even as a pro with a friend, the best you could probably manage is some shitty clone of Maple Story in 2D with terrible networking and no content. Why? Because even the cheapest Korean Basketball MMO takes millions of dollars and hundreds of people to create.


Please set your sights somewhere (slightly) realistic, like graduating with a decent portfolio,
which is something a vast majority of UCF freshman haven't managed to do for the past 48 years the campus has been in existence. Hopefully this very incomplete guide will help clear things up a bit.

I. What does UCF offer in terms of becoming a successful game developer?
The biggest advantage of UCF is it's community and the friendships and reputation you make now that will help you in the job market later. However, you probably also want to know which majors/course to take as well, so...

Positions

• Game Designer

Surprise! This position doesn't exist in the real world. The only game designers in the entire world are rich assholes like Richard Garriot who make bad games. Everyone else is either an artist, programmer, writer, composer, or some combination of the above. Making a game on a AAA level is a team effort, so what you're thinking of are perhaps the people who design game levels or mechanics. Usually these people are combination artist-programmers who not only think of the rules but have to put them into place as well. See the Digital Media - Game Development track.

• Game Programmer

In AAA studios, game programmers are highly specialized developers who usually concentrate on a single area. There are toolset programmers, engine programmers, graphics, sound, networking, and gameplay programmers just to name a few. You'll do good looking into Computer Science, unless you want to do Web Dev which in that case look into Digital Media - Web Design.

• Game Artist

There are all types of artists involved in production work. If you're looking to do anything 2D or 3D, definitely go for the Digital Media - Character Animation Track. Already into the Fine Arts? There's also an Experimental Animation track there. If you can't make it into either, there's also a regular Fine Arts degree.

• Other

Fairly obviously, composer should go music Major, writers should english major etc.


Relevant Majors/Classes

• Digital Media Major - Game Design, Web Design Tracks; Computer Science Major

These majors will not prepare you well for the industry. Suck it up and spend as much time as possible going above and beyond your projects to build up your portfolio.

• Digital Media Major - Character Animation Track

This intense track gives you and 34 lucky others two years to learn how to create from start to finish a 5 minute 3D animated short film. They have a very high placement in the film and games industries, and a direct line to FIEA. Expect no life or free time here, and a very strict portfolio review before entering. This is only one out of two majors in North America to offer a multi-year team project; something that looks extremely impressive in a cover letter or on a resume. Located next to FIEA in downtown Orlando.

• Fine Arts - Experimental Animation, Illustration Tracks

Portfolio review, and lots of work. Expect to spend a large amount of your free time drinking heavily while scrambling to put together some sort of game related portfolio that you can't use for anything until you graduate.

Grad Schools

• FIEA

FIEA loves Character Animation Track grads. They're OK with very dedicated Computer Science majors. It's hard to get in, but the expensive experience takes you through making an indie game start to finish and is near guaranteed to land you a job. It's also conveniently located in Downtown Orlando!

• SCAD

SCAD is artist heaven/hell, but feel free to head to Pixar or Blizzard afterwards if you have the drive and portfolio.

• DigiPen

Valve recruits from here. Need I say more?

What do I do Freshman and Sophomore Years?
Don't waste time!!! Get over yourself and get that homework out of the way so you can party hard, network, and make friends. If you still manage to have free time, spend at least an equal amount of time getting involved in a game modification or mini project as you do playing the games you love. There's plenty of "mods" looking for talented help on ModDB and releasing even a small but high-quality mod can give your portfolio a huge boost.



Got questions? Feel free to ask. All the best of luck!

This post has been edited by cyb.tachyon: 24 August 2011 - 06:25 PM

[Zenebatos]

What track are you in? Character animation?

[TerranUp16]

Rather noice write-up, ol' Tachy.

I disagree on actual designers not existing, but certainly agree that a) a sizable chunk of companies don't employ actual designers and it's a matter of simple math that you need to make yourself as appealing to as many companies as possible and even if you wanted to narrow your deck and go for a pure designer route, game design isn't something that can effectively be taught in a classroom and you'll find that most of the companies that do actually hire designers don't give a rat's ass if you actually majored or minored or etc in game design or not.

If you're properly interested in design (excluding level design here), you want to focus on your writing (quite simply, writing is how you convey EVERYTHING- we're not just talking dialogue and such here, we're talking all kinds of written communication), documentation/organization (this is different from writing although it requires good writing skills too!), scripting (you really should learn at least one programming language as well, but at a bare minimum make sure you know a couple of scripting languages- Lua is always popular- and are ready to learn new ones), research (you'll be spending plenty of time looking things up and fact-checking), history (knowing a good chunk of history never hurt anyone and it's a great source of inspiration both for storylines and game items), and reasoning/evaluation (this sorta goes without saying really). Also, a good knowledge of physics tends to be a huge help for most games (not necessarily for what most people point to as physics in a game, but for reference- many gameplay systems require you to abstract physical interactions to meet sane processing requirements and for sci-fi games, a good knowledge of physics will allow you to more easily devise unique things to populate your sci-fi world with).

Most of all though, you need to know games, and movies, and books. But this is the part of design you for sure knew about. Just make sure to play as wide a variety of games- good and bad- as you can, and constantly strive to understand why they are good and bad. Ask yourself and answer why the chase from Paul Denton's apartment in Deus Ex is one of the greatest feats of scripted gameplay design, and why Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" is one of the greatest flops. Make sure you've seen every Alien movie 50 times at least, and that you've played as many classic games as you can get your hands on. Pay attention in English/literature- not all those books and stories and such are great, but the core intent of those classes is to spur your capability to think critically of such works, and that is exactly the capability a good designer needs to make sense of everything- and yes, that includes even accepting that you are going to think the author did things on purpose when he/she didn't even consider it, and that's all still fine because if you can find deeper meaning to something than the author intended, you can usually figure out how to leverage that for yourself later.


So what should you major in for game design? As Tachyon sorta pointed out above, it's really up to you. Personally, as a Design Director, the last thing I usually want to see on someone's resume is that they majored in game design. I know, that sounds horrible, but let me explain: the average game design graduate that I've come across uses the fact that he/she majored in game design as carte blanch to slack off. They don't make any efforts to go above and beyond the course, believing that the curriculum will hand them everything they need. They typically don't learn much more than Flash for scripting, tend to barely understand that, and don't make any effort to become respectable writers or to gain useful history/physics/etc knowledge that helps in some way. In short, they tend to be trained monkeys that run into problems the second they need to do something they haven't been trained for, which is the very definition of any kind of game design. That said, you can definitely major in game design and put effort into doing things on the side and taking programming, history, English, etc... courses, but you will need to make it very apparent you have done that as far too many others have just ruined the reputation of game design graduates for myself and others who would employ you. So with that said, you really can major in just about anything as long as you work on design-related projects.

What projects should you concern yourself with? Even if level design isn't your goal, custom maps are always a great place to start. WarCraft 3 was ideal for this, but even games like Dawn of War 2 that are terrain-only for the most part are still very effective at helping you improve your design skills and understanding. Once you're at a good level with mapping, pick a skill and get involved in a mod. By "pick a skill", I mean learn the scripting language for the game you intend to mod, learn some art (2D, 3D, scanned-in traditional, etc... doesn't matter), learn some audio engineering, learn some IT... learn any skill other than design that will make you appealing to a mod team. Modders tend to not tolerate pure designers in part because most modders are at a stage where they're pretty arrogant when it comes to game design and honestly do feel they can do a better job than anyone in a design position and/or the game's actual developers. By coming in with and leveraging a non-design skill, you can still usually work your way into the mod's design circle and get team development experience (which is invaluable). Finally, try to get on or create an indie team, and there you can use the skill you learned for modding alongside your purer design skills as Tachyon described.

You'll also want to build up a portfolio of short stories (these tend to be an ideal length to showcase your narrative, dialogue, and storycrafting skills such that your potential employer will actually read them), backstory/world/etc information for your short story, game pitches, system designs (for example, designs for a first person melee combat system), and anything you can get cleared to include from old projects (design documents are great here). Personally, I also like to see some game reviews (these should not read like something off IGN, but rather should be specific in focus and tailored to evaluating the design elements of a game), but that's pretty nonstandard, although something to consider nonetheless.

I hope that wall of text helps =)

[Oen386]

TerranUp16, on 24 August 2011 - 03:45 PM, said:

I hope that wall of text helps =)

It doesn't help if there isn't a tl;dr summary.

[Brain?!]

Oen386, on 24 August 2011 - 05:42 PM, said:

It doesn't help if there isn't a tl;dr summary.

tl;dr: a bunch of people in this thread are pretending to know something about game design when they're still in college and don't have any actual industry experience

[cyb.tachyon]

Zenebatos, on 24 August 2011 - 01:43 PM, said:

What track are you in? Character animation?

Yes, formerly known as Visual Language.

Brain?!, on 24 August 2011 - 05:56 PM, said:

tl;dr: a bunch of people in this thread are pretending to know something about game design when they're still in college and don't have any actual industry experience

At least I broke my post up with pretty pictures and bulleted lists! If there's any reason for me to think I know enough to write advice, it's I've been making mods and hanging out with people in the industry for over a decade now and I hear this advice all the time from them. Just passing along the good word!

[TerranUp16]

Brain?!, on 24 August 2011 - 05:56 PM, said:

tl;dr: a bunch of people in this thread are pretending to know something about game design when they're still in college and don't have any actual industry experience

Actually, I have worked at EA. And turned down a job offer from Relic (was for a Balance Designer position on CoH:O, but they weren't going to pay relocation fees and for those who don't know, balance designer is an entry-level design position for Relic).

This post has been edited by TerranUp16: 25 August 2011 - 03:05 PM

[Oen386]

TerranUp16, on 25 August 2011 - 08:43 AM, said:

Actually, I have worked at EA.

I know people that have "worked" there. Bug testing 10~12 hours a day.