PixlBit

The plot thickens in the search for a game design school

Yesterday I went to the 2D Graphics Programming class at Westwood and sat-in on it from 9am till about noon. It was a ton of fun. There were about twenty students, five were girls, and there was a lot of energy and diversity in the class. We began the session by going up one-by-one and using the professor's computer and projector to play and examine 2D games that students had made in previous years. There were tons of laughs because most of the games had dramatic bugs. One guy loaded up a game where he started the level and received a "Victory!" screen almost instantly without knowing what happened. Most of the games were extremely difficult and had nasty collision detection issues but there were also a few truly interesting games that launched a lot of examination into what games had great potential and where the students went right.

One game I talked about and thought was great was one where you stood on-top of a stone tower in the middle of a field as skeleton monsters came to attack you. The player shot arrows to bring them down in a simple base-defense style system. You only had one attack, single arrows, and there were only two monster types: normal skeletons, and the Grim Reaper whom came by and resurrected any downed skeletons in the column or row he was patrolling. With more options to defend your tower, like an ability to shoot volleys and use an AOE attack, you could keep it interesting for longer. If you had more monster types, and obviously more refinement in general, that student's idea could be a perfect game for tablets. Maybe you could give players the option leave the tower to engage in melee combat and pick up power-ups from special dead monsters as well.. The rest of our time was filled with a lecture about DirectX and programming games for PC.

The three hours of class-time flew by and I left the room super high on the program and ready to enroll, ...then I went to the admissions representative. She gave me the awful news that the entire game programming and design degree had just been scrapped last week because apparently no new students were enrolled in the program for 2014, so they had to cut it. All those great people I just met in the 2D Graphics Programming class were the last batch and I missed the boat. Back to the drawing board.

I'm still planning to come into the industry from the programming side, so I've been comparing different degrees from a variety of schools that offer either a BS in Computer Science, or an actual BS program specific to game design. There's a lot of great universities across the country that offer solid computer science, and a surprising number of them offer minors, electives, or fleeting fancies in game design. But very few seem to actually have majors and a robust system for undergraduates on game programming. Out of the top 25 schools, the one that appeals to me most so far is DigiPen up in Washington.

I've known about DigiPen for several years, ever since a team of their students were hired into Valve and created Portal. DigiPen is at #3 in the top twenty-five, whereas Westwood didn't even make the list of best programs, so the differences between schools is probably self-explanatory.

Before I apply I'll need a lot of prep work in math, physics, and programming. This summer, fall, and probably even into the spring I need to take as many classes as I can afford at our community college. They have Calculus, Calc-based Physics, foundational programming courses, and even Computer Science classes in C++ and JAVA. Once I've seriously boned up on some skills, and I can prove it, I'll start putting together an application for DigiPen. I need to make the best case for myself that I can, and in the event that I might get admitted to the school I need to know all that stuff because their courses assume you do.

My goal after I got a degree (regardless of where I got it) was to move to the Seattle area. So the fact that DigiPen is nearby in Redmond means that, if I could get into the school, I'd already be living within the hub, close to the job opportunities, and strategically be where I want to be. For now, that's the long-term and short-term plan, we will see what happens with this one. I was pretty deflated after the plan at Westwood fell through yesterday, but after I slept it off I started to take all that determination and focus it on a new target instead of letting it lose steam. DigiPen would be more difficult, more expensive, and it's far from my home here in Colorado.

If you talked to me about it a couple years ago I would've told you that I was too poor and dumb to ever set my sights on such a good school, but 2014 is different. I'm going to make myself qualified, and just like last time, if it turns out that the school is a good fit for me, I'll do whatever it takes.