Looking for advice for my little brother!

ninjabox

Hi,

My brother is filling out his CAO form at the moment. He wants to work in the gaming industry, so he is putting down games development.

I'm a recent graduate of Computer Science starting a job as a software developer. My brother doesn't know exactly what area of games development he wants to work in.

I'm not an expert but I think the gaming industry has two main job types: designer/artist or programmer. My brother is probably going to be mad at me for saying this but realistically he is not likely to become an designer/artist. He is quite good at maths and enjoys the bit of programming he does at the moment in his PLC (Multimedia).

I think my brother should go into a pure Computer Science course as he would probably get a better understanding of the foundations of programming. My brother is adamant that he wants to go for the games development course.

What do you guys think? Games Development or Computer Science?

If you work in the gaming industry please mention it:)

ChRoMe

ninjabox wrote: »

Hi,

My brother is filling out his CAO form at the moment. He wants to work in the gaming industry, so he is putting down games development.

I'm a recent graduate of Computer Science starting a job as a software developer. My brother doesn't know exactly what area of games development he wants to work in.

I'm not an expert but I think the gaming industry has two main job types: designer/artist or programmer. My brother is probably going to be mad at me for saying this but realistically he is not likely to become an designer/artist. He is quite good at maths and enjoys the bit of programming he does at the moment in his PLC (Multimedia).

I think my brother should go into a pure Computer Science course as he would probably get a better understanding of the foundations of programming. My brother is adamant that he wants to go for the games development course.

What do you guys think? Games Development or Computer Science?

If you work in the gaming industry please mention it:)

Computer science

Banta

I know of 2 people who work in the games industry and they both did computer science. My gut instinct says computer science, but I don't know how good (or well recognised) the games development courses are these days.

I'll ask the 2 lads, but as I said, gut instinct - computer science.

srsly78

Maths, Physics or Computer Science. The various "game development" courses on offer tend to be very light on the technical stuff (ie maths and programming).

lemon_remon

Designer is not the same as artist. Designers come up with the game mechanics, story and things like that. The programmers implement it. In the "olden" days game designers and programmers were generally the same thing. It still kinda is for indie games and the likes.

Creamy Goodness

computer science, purely because if he can't hack / doesn't like games development he'll still have a solid foundation to get himself another job in the industry.

start out broad in your career, then specialise.

Royale with Cheese

If he's likely to end up coding rather than doing design/graphics then just go with computer science. Code is code at the end of the day. As a developer I'd be far more interested in the technologies used during development rather than what the end product is. Basically if he tries coding mobile, web or desktop applications and finds that isn't for him then I doubt he'll find games development much different.

Aswerty

He can always do a Maters/post-grad in game development once he has his primary degree. Though I'd expect if he's focused on game development all assingments/projects he has control over in a computer science course can be done in that direction.

I would most definitely echo the others and say go for the general degree.

I've heard people interested in reneweable energy having the same question regarding specialised renewable energy degrees or general engineering degrees. The answer is always go general then specialise if it is still what you want. Remember a final year project or disseratation is often as far as many need to go with regards specialising for the job market.

dazberry

Some colleges do [optional] modules on games development as part of their overall computer science degree, for instance while I would not personally be interested in games development I took a games focused AI module that covered the likes of path-finding / flocking etc.

D.

ninjabox

Thanks everyone for the advice I'm getting my brother to look at this thread whenever there's a new response and I think its making him consider it!

CreepingDeath

+1 For Computer science.

It's good to have a broad knowledge of computer science, huge parts of computer science are indirectly applicable to game development eg.

databases - store scores/profiles for massive online games
web development - online gaming, gambling websites, in-game purchases
artificial intelligence - computer generated players, navigating from A to B in a 2D/3D space over obsticles
networking - online gaming, in game messaging between players, download game updates/patches automatically
mobile programming - mobile phone games, authentication
security - in game purchases, anti-piracy measures, anti-cheating mechanisms

It's been 20 years since I completed my B.Sc in computer science, but even then in year 4 you had the option of "graphics", which taught you the math/algorithms/theory behind graphics and gaming.

In my 3rd year project I wrote a 3D graphics engine, so he'll have the opportunity to still learn gaming on his own.

Plus not all game development requires programming.
There's open source games engines where you create maps and levels yourself without writing a line of code.

I don't work in the games industry, but my perception of it is that it can be quite stressful.
Games companies are under serious pressure to deliver games for the christmas rush, compete with other similar games etc.
So I imagine there's more late nights/weekend work at times.