Trinity to introduce MA in video games

fatherdougalmag

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0704/games.html

The first Masters degree in video games to be offered by an Irish university will begin at Trinity College in October.

Hobbes

Great! Now I can get qualified in Super Mario!

Actually there is a really good book on developing in the Games industry called "Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds". It really gives a good insight of how to code for certain genres and what to expect in the industry.

Evil Phil

Here's the course website: http://isg.cs.tcd.ie/IET/

cornbb

Looks like fun

Although UL introduced an undergraduate course in games development a few years ago, it was essentially a minor variation/spin-off of the Computer Systems course which had seen numbers drop dramatically for years. Whatever gets people interested, I suppose!

fatherdougalmag

Carlow have had one for a while too.

scojones

ITTralee have a games development course too. Mind you it's not an MA, it's a degree.

leeroybrown

What makes this one particularly interesting is that it is being run by Steve Collins (blog) who was a co-founder of Havok and also that TCD have a research partnership with IBM doing work with the Cell BE architecture.

damnyanks

Whats even more interesting is that to be a good games developer you have to be far more competent then the standard enterprise developers yet you get ripped off when it comes to pay day.

At least this is my experience of rare and ea

satchmo

damnyanks wrote:

Whats even more interesting is that to be a good games developer you have to be far more competent then the standard enterprise developers yet you get ripped off when it comes to pay day.

At least this is my experience of rare and ea

That's simply not true for a lot of games companies out there, you just have to look at the latest Game Developer salary survey to see that. Even for EA I'm sure it depends which studio you work at, what your position is, and how much experience you have.

Steve has put together an excellent course, and I don't doubt it'll be the best games course in the country when it gets started.

Placebo

id do it but is there a market for game developers here?

satchmo

Unfortunately there's not a very big market here, and most of the jobs have to be gotten abroad. There are a few companies alright (Havok, DemonWare, Instinct, CanDo etc - see the list on gamedevelopers.ie), but in general there aren't a lot of development jobs.

Hopefully in time Ireland will become more appealing to game companies, but for the moment most jobs have to be gotten elsewhere. But hey, if you're serious about game development then you won't mind spending some time abroad, right?!

leeroybrown

I think it's fair to say that if you work in any niche area of development (or IT in general) theres a good chance you'll need to move to get a good job. For example, I work in a niche area of IT and theres a good chance that I would have to move abroad should I chose to change jobs.

damnyanks

I have no doubt the course is excellent and challenging. I'd love to do it myself. A capable graduate of the course would have excellent computer science abilities. The level of maths and physics required for games programming is rarely touched upon on a standard undergrad.

From what I've seen people working creating games engines and what not are underpaid in my own opinion. I know someone who wrote a mobile games engine that allowed their games to run on all varieties of phones (They were bought by THQ). I know some guys working in EA in the UK and Rare. They earn in the 40k euro mark (They are 0 -3 years exp guys)

They could easily walk into a higher paid job outside the industry as their abilities are generally very high from what I've seen.

steviec

damnyanks wrote:

I have no doubt the course is excellent and challenging. I'd love to do it myself. A capable graduate of the course would have excellent computer science abilities. The level of maths and physics required for games programming is rarely touched upon on a standard undergrad.

From what I've seen people working creating games engines and what not are underpaid in my own opinion. I know someone who wrote a mobile games engine that allowed their games to run on all varieties of phones (They were bought by THQ). I know some guys working in EA in the UK and Rare. They earn in the 40k euro mark (They are 0 -3 years exp guys)

They could easily walk into a higher paid job outside the industry as their abilities are generally very high from what I've seen.

Yep, games jobs are generally underpaid compared to their equivalents in other areas, and the skills required are very high.

It's easily understandable really, a lot of people really enjoy games and want to create them, much more so than equivalent technical areas, and when you have people who want to do the job more, you don't have to give them as big a cash incentive.

Standards in the industry vary greatly though, because it's such a young and changing industry, a lot of companies can't deal with it and that's when you get unacceptable crunch periods and poor working conditions. At the right company though it's a solid career.

satchmo

Ask them if they'd do database programming for an extra 10k a year, and I'm pretty sure they'd say 'hell no'! I'm not sure about the UK, but I'd say that salary is fairly average given the amount of experience. The good games companies tend to have good benefits too, like full health insurance, decent holidays, free food etc. which has to be taken into account.

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

Placebo wrote:

id do it but is there a market for game developers here?

not in ireland, and its usualy the best of the best programmers that are given jobs. hours can be very long, espically comming up to release dates. Also its a lot harder program games for a ps3 or 360 than a pc

LookingFor

I tend to be wary of courses like this.

That Steve Collins is leading it adds credibility.

However, any time I've read advice from game developers on education, they've tended to say "if you want to be a programmer, then do a pure programming degree", "if you want to be an artist, do a pure art degree", and so on. They didn't seem to put much stock into 'videogames' courses. However looking at the module list, it might be more decent than most, in that it does seem to focus specifically on programming games rather than taking broad brush strokes at all aspects of games development.

Cake Fiend

Pretty sure Steve Collins is a TCD Maths or CS grad himself, as are many of the original Telekinesis/Havok guys. If there's anyone who knows the technical demands of game dev, it's him.

Placebo

http://kotaku.com/gaming/academia/trinity-college-dublin-offering-new-video-game-ma-275961.php


LOL?

Doodee

Havok are not a games development company.

satchmo

They may not develop the actual games, but what difference does that make? They're a middleware company.

Doodee

because misinformation is dangerous

mountainyman

It is not a degree it is a masters presumably you need a good primary IT degree to get in.

My understanding is that Havok are excellent payers.

MM

Boston

damnyanks wrote:

I have no doubt the course is excellent and challenging. I'd love to do it myself. A capable graduate of the course would have excellent computer science abilities. The level of maths and physics required for games programming is rarely touched upon on a standard undergrad.

From what I've seen people working creating games engines and what not are underpaid in my own opinion. I know someone who wrote a mobile games engine that allowed their games to run on all varieties of phones (They were bought by THQ). I know some guys working in EA in the UK and Rare. They earn in the 40k euro mark (They are 0 -3 years exp guys)

They could easily walk into a higher paid job outside the industry as their abilities are generally very high from what I've seen.

The course is open to Computer and Electronic engineering Graduates who would have the backing in Maths and Physics, its also open to maths graduates as far as I know.

mountainyman: You'd need a good CS or Engineering degree to get in, an IT degree wouldn't cut mustard.

monkey junkie

Computer game programming is lots and lots of Calculus.

If you don't love maths, and aren't excellent at it, don't try to get a job as a games programmer...