Pulse College Game Development Course Review

ecoste

I went to the open-day a year ago, and I walked out trying not to laugh. It was a joke, a shameless money grab. I was genuinely mad that some people were tricked into believing that they're going to get anything of value at that course.

The guy/teacher who was conducting the tour, was quite young. When asked if he ever made a game, he said that he's working on his first one with his team. Yeah...

He said that the course mainly uses Unity, which is a nice engine for small-game development. However, what really struck me is that he said programming is kept to a minimum, and the first year the course was rolled-out, they avoided programming all-together. You can't make anything of value without the use of code, I guess they were using the plugin "Playmaker" to avoid programming, but that restricts you to almost nothing.

The best part was when he showed the students' final projects. He showed like 5 in total, 3 of which I couldn't even even make out to be actual games. I'm not exaggerating here, I really couldn't tell that they were actual games and not some visual cluster****. The 4th one was a walking-simulator with graphics from 1997(I kid you not) and the 5th one actually had some merit to it and was presentable. Still utter ****, but it was an actual functioning game.

Now, here's what they try to achieve in 2 years. Straight from their website, and still no programming. (Okay fair enough, C# is mentioned in the detailed overview.)

Dynamics of modern 3D games by looking at what goes on ‘under the hood’
Concept art
Construction of complex scenes
Development of 3D game levels
Production of realistic environments for first, and third, person games
Camera and lighting techniques, audio design for interactive media, texturing and special effects all play a part in this immersive games development course

Now, I hope I don't need to say this, but there's literally no way you can adequately learn any of this in 2 years. Full-time concept art alone will take you 2 years to become sub-par at. Not to mention all of that other crap.

Why do I post this rant? Because I could only find one bad review of the course online, and the course was that god damn **** that I feel that not informing others would be a crime. Here's that other review: http://dublin.ratemyarea.com/places/pulse-college-130064#show_reviews


Hector K. says:

Started in this college 2 years ago doing the computer games course. 
Upon enrolling I was under the impression based on the facility in windmill lane that I was in for a good thing. 
well impressions can be very deceiving.

Had mainly started it for photoshop and concept art and 3d modelling. the issues were unreal! ESPECIALLY after paying so much money for what I consider to be substandard equipment (macintosh computers partitioned with windows, 3d max TRIAL licences which expire after 30 days.) the classes in 3d, programming and concept art and storyboarding were actually really well structured and to the teachers credit were very worth while. However it felt like all the lecturer's were as much a victim of the issues as the students.

Other issues were last minute changes to schedules and timetables. I had my roster (based on the initial schedule pulse had given me) sorted with work to facilitate going to college and low and behold the college would change it on a whim from week to week meaning I would miss classes to go to work and this would occur all the time. We had only ONE yes one sound class with our lecturer. and keep in mind this college "Prides itself" on the primary basis that they have had big artists in the premises to record music. yet we cant get more than one class with the educators for what they pride themselves on.

Half our class had dropped out or didnt even bother coming in. it felt like half way through the year we learned more on youtube with the exception of concept art and 3d modelling.

my opinion... Dont go here unless you want to waste your money. 
I left at the very end and didnt pay my last instalment and they hounded me with a letter saying I "broke a contract" if i didnt go back for my second year. Ive heard from a friend of mine other horror stories. one of which involves they tried to setup in galway and run the same thing but it was an equally bad disaster.

aquse

A rather emotional review...

Burkie7

Was considering doing this but this review has put me off.

Do you know of any good part time courses for game design?

aquse

Burkie7 wrote: »

Was considering doing this but this review has put me off.

Do you know of any good part time courses for game design?

Good that it put you off.