Is Video Game Design School Right For You?
Tuesday, 16th April 2013Posted in Industry
Tags: depaul, game design, game design school, usc, where to go for game design
Written by: Paul Nyhart
Should you go to game design school? Is game design school really necessary to acquiring a job in the video game industry? These are questions a number of our fans have asked us in the past, and given the increased popularity of video games, they certainly are viable. We sought to answer these questions, asking a Master’s student at The University of Southern California’s Interactive Media Division, which many believe is the premier school for interactive and video game design in the country. We also consulted a professor of video game design at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media, also widely regarded as one of the nation’s top “video game design schools.” They provided the following answers below and a perspective to whether video game design school may be right for you.
Evan Sforza is a master’s student going on his 3rd year at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, even though he began his undergraduate studies in pre-med. He says, “…when I had started college, it wasn’t apparent that working in games was even possible. But, I’d always loved Bungie’s Halo, and still do, and one day I had actually decided to check Bungie’s job section on their website.” Continue reading “Is Video Game Design School Right For You?” »
And the Best School for Game Design Is…
Wednesday, 13th March 2013Posted in Industry
Tags: Entertainment Arts and Engineering, game design, game design program, graduate program, Salt Lake City Tribune, The Princeton Review, University of Utah
Written by: Jeff Nau
Follow @jeffnau
Thinking of being a game designer? Forget Los Angeles and New York — according to a study in The Princeton Review, The University of Utah and its Entertainment Arts and Engineering Program now officially ranks as the top game design school in the country. This past week, their undergraduate program beat out USC, RISD, Ringling, and 148 more of the nation’s top-rated colleges for a #1 spot.
If you’re considering getting a Master’s, their graduate program didn’t fare badly either, placing at no.2.
Continue reading “And the Best School for Game Design Is…” »
Boy Scouts of America to Award New Merit Badge — for Game Design
Tuesday, 12th March 2013Posted in Gaming News
Tags: boy scouts, designers, game design, merit badge, video games
Written by: Jeff Nau
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As of this year, The Boy Scouts of America will enact a new series of steps to allow for a new merit badge: game design.
Scouts will now even be able to choose the specific genre of game they want to play — such as, for instance, role playing or action game design. Continue reading “Boy Scouts of America to Award New Merit Badge — for Game Design” »
R.I.P. Chris Erhardt, Classic C64/Amiga Game Designer
Monday, 10th December 2012Posted in Industry
Tags: Battletech, Chris Erhardt, Dungeons and Dragons, game, game design, game development, Pool of Radiance, SSI
Written by: Jeff Nau
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Sad news in the gaming world this week, as classic strategy game designer Chris Erhardt has passed away.
Erhardt made his name developing two of the Commodore 64/Amiga’s best-selling strategy war games — Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception and the Dungeons and Dragons role-player Pool of Radiance. Continue reading “R.I.P. Chris Erhardt, Classic C64/Amiga Game Designer” »
Valve Comes to the Classroom: Your Substitute Teacher Will Be GLaDOS
Monday, 25th June 2012Posted in Blog Archive, Gaming
Tags: game design, glados, math, physics, portal, portal 2, Puzzle Maker, Teach With Portals, teacher, teachers, valve
Written by: Jeff Nau
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Valve will be entering schools across America soon. Teach With Portals, Valve’s first step into the teaching market, makes me wonder why they didn’t think of this before: utilizing lessons, designed by teachers themselves, you get educational versions of Portal 2 and Puzzle Maker, 2 Valve-crafted video games.
All you have to do is be a real teacher (in a very GLaDOS way, they have methods of finding out whether you’re actually an educator) and sign up for free for the Education Beta on the Steam for Schools website — and soon, you’ll be getting the values of the Portal world to your students. Continue reading “Valve Comes to the Classroom: Your Substitute Teacher Will Be GLaDOS” »
Ask Jace: How To Break Into The Video Game Industry Tip #1
Saturday, 15th May 2010Posted in Ask Jace, Blog Archive
Tags: Ask Jace, business advice, game design, game development, game industry, game making, game publishing, how to break into the video game industry, how to make games, keys to success, Monolith Productions
Written by: Jace Hall
I often get asked how one should go about getting a video game idea they have made, or how to get a start in the game industry. I thought I should just try to answer the below e-mail I received the other day on my blog so that anyone who was interested in asking me this could hear what I have to say on the subject:
Name Mike
Breaking into the Industry Message
First, I would like to start off by saying “Thank You” for the Jace Hall Show. For awhile my only means of video game news/entertainment was the G4 network, which is good for what it is, but the majority of the hosts are not gamers and have not worked in the video game industry, so I feel somewhat disconnected from them on that aspect (But I’ll be damned if some of them aren’t hot!!).
I’ve been a gamer since my first nintendo in 1986, and I’ve played so many games over my lifetime I’ve begun in the past 15 years or so to heavily critique games in the genres I love, mainly RPG and Turn Based Strategy games. So much so that in the past few years I’ve been working on what I would call a “Video Game Screenplay”. Basically I have written down everything I want in a game, and how I would like to have it made. I know it sounds childish to some point since I’m going on 28, but it’s a hobby to me, and one that I enjoy immensely. Which brings me to why I’m writing you. I have basically written an entire video game (story, battle engine, character devlopment, etc.), and I’m wondering how to go about possibly presenting this idea to a perspective company for production. Think along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics (in my opinion the greatest turn based strategy game ever). I think that many of the greatest games ever will go uncreated simply because most people with the ideas (gamers like myself) don’t know what channels to funnel their ideas through. I understand that companies hire programmers, artists and writers, but how do you produce credentials and a video game creator, the person that decides “THIS” is the game we are going to create. The field has just become so lucrative and expansive, unlike 25 years ago when a person with a good idea could get a game made with minimal prodcution expense compared to today. Will companies take a chance on an idea from an outside source, or is the little guy with big ideas forced to create facebook and flash games?
Any insight that you could provide on this matter would be appreciated greatly (I need something to do with the 100 page binder I’ve amassed over the years).
Thanks Jace,
Mike
Dear Mike,
While I can imagine that a tremendous amount of thought and work has gone into your game design idea, the short answer is that, generally speaking, the video game industry is not set up to easily digest and process “outside pitches” that come from individuals with little to no proven game design/creation experience.
There are many reasons for this but here are just a couple of easy-to-describe reasons:
1.) The video game industry is not short on ideas. Go to ANY game company and within its walls you will find individual employees with numerous concepts, ideas, stories, even functional prototypes / proof of concepts that they have built themselves. Ideas are plentiful and a lot of them are great. YET, they do not get made. This is because while the ideas are many, the number of people available on Earth who can actually MAKE THE GAME is incredibly limited.
This is not even a question of money, of which there is plenty of. It is an actual physical limitation of having access to human beings that know how to take an idea and forge it into reality on a Playstation 3 or XBOX 360 (or whatever.) Currently, the demand far exceeds the supply.
One of the toughest challenges that any sizeable video game publisher has to face is how to fulfill and execute on all the ideas they already have. Video games can take years to build, so any decision is not only a big economic one but also one that ties up valuable human resources for extended periods of time. The video game industry is constantly facing an issue that is referred to as “opportunity cost.” If they make this game today, they can’t make that other one tomorrow – they just wont have the capacity. Publishers have a finite number of game development teams.
This is a key differential from Hollywood. In Hollywood, although the production investments can be enormous, generally the physical supply of talent to create film and television programing exceeds the demand of the number of available productions (one of the huge advantages of having a fixed final delivery platform of ”film”, instead of having to literally re-invent everything every 5-7 years when the consoles “upgrade” – but more on that in a different article!) On top of this, the bulk of most film’s heavy spending and en masse team work is measured in months, not years. So key talent can get in and out of a production and be available to work on something else. This creates the opportunity of more and more productions of varying sizes and types and eventually over 80+ years time the need for new ideas wherever they might come from since they have used up every internal idea imaginable and still have capacity.
The video game industry is not there yet. Instead, imagine if Will Smith signed on to a movie and simply could not work on anything else for over 3 years. Key, bankable actors being tied up for 3 years at a time would have a profound impact on the film industry. Some things would be quite limited and different. Welcome to the video game industry!
2.) Given the above points (and many others I don’t have time to articulate) it just does not make a lot of sense for publishers to open the front doors and let inexperienced people come in and pitch game ideas. On top of that there are numerous considerations that must go into a game design that relates to the actual limitations of not only the current hardware technology, but also the particular software technology that an individual publisher uses or has developed and it is very unlikely that an inexperienced designer would know to design with those considerations in mind.
Due to all this, the current business model really doesn’t support the notion of buying random external “game designs” and then doing all the heavy lifting to make the idea into a product.
There are many other factors that I could go into, and I’m sure there will always be some exception to the rule, but I’m going to stop describing the obstacles and now I am going to tell you what you CAN do to possibly make some headway with your efforts.
2 SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN TRY:
Option 1.) One of the points that I made above is the scarcity of competent development resources in the video game industry. Publishers look left and right to find independent developers that demonstrate capacity and promise and they quickly engage them with projects and determine if a longer term relationship might make sense (i.e. BUYING THE DEVELOPER.)
Given this publisher need, you can use it to your advantage – your challenge is to approach DEVELOPERS with your idea/design instead of PUBLISHERS and convince them that you have something amazing. Among many things (like budgeting) a developer will be able to examine your design and if there are technical problems with it (unfeasibility, etc.) they will know what can be done (or not done about it.)
IF you can get a developer to get excited about your design, it will be UP TO THEM to take it to publishers and engage them.
A competent developer with a track record, and an idea they are passionate about will get the attention of a publisher, I assure you. At that point, you will be in the game and have a chance.
Now, I am not sure of the size and scope of your game design, but if you are targeting premium AAA game production as your end result (like GEARS OF WAR), to be honest, most competent developers with worthwhile track records that could do that job, will likely not be interested in speaking with you. They are busy. Forever. Seriously.
So, if you are going to take this direction, aim high, but set your expectations more toward finding a smaller, perhaps somewhat unproven independent developer that is looking to make it big. It is possible that they have been so busy doing grunt-work just to survive as a business that they may not ever have had time to develop a full-super-big game development idea and document. It is possible that you might just walk in and provide the missing piece they’ve been looking for!
You’ll never know until you try.
Option 2.) Build your own game team and make the game yourself. I’m not going to go into the detail of how to completely do this (I’ll save it for my book!) – but basically you need to find other people with the necessary complimentary talents who are as hungry as you are and work together toward the common goal of creating the game. Everyone will need to contribute, everyone will need to sacrifice, and everyone will need to cooperate. They may be inexperienced, or poor communicators, or whatever, but as long as they share your passion to see it through, you will all be successful. I promise. I know this because this is the route I took to enter the game industry. I founded MONOLITH PRODUCTIONS INC. with 4 of my friends when I was 23 years old. The rest is history!
I know this is not an all encompassing answer to your questions – but I hope it helped a little. In the end, I can tell you that there is no single way to break into the games business, but it all starts just by making the attempt – which you have done by sitting down and writing your game design document – KEEP GOING – try anything – define yourself by what you CAN do and not by what you CAN’T.
-Jace
Ask Jace: How I do it – Keys to Success Tip #1
Wednesday, 21st April 2010Posted in Ask Jace, Blog Archive
Tags: achievement, advice, Ask Jace, business advice, game design, goals, how to, Jace Hall Show, keys to success, motivation, winning
Written by: Jace Hall
I received this letter the other day and I wanted to answer it but share my response with everybody because I get a lot of e-mails that are very similar.
From: Cyrus
Subject: INSPIRED O.O by youu, sir.
Message Body:
FIRSTLY!
i wonder if jace hall actually reads this…if not i will sound lame. =]
MAINLY!
just wanted to say ive been inspired by you (if you’re actually reading which i doubt as you seem to be rich and famous and have no time for fans ‘SADFACE’)
Anyways, yeah my outlook on life has been that of generally to be successful you need to be hardworking and have little time for your life. But you’ve been the CEO of companies and produced massive amounts of games and still are able to be seemingly carefree and stay positive (not in the please dont commit suicide way, but in the life is wtfpwning amazing way….if you understand.)
TO THE POINT
As i am still in school i wanted to know what subjects to take (high school or university) that are related to the whole aspect of game designing…..because i am generally uninspired by school and enjoy playing wow too much -.-” but i am on the verge of an epiphany that will make me…work hard. SOUMUSTREPLY =]
PS im not crazy, just eccentric when it comes to writing letters. =]
PSS i REALLY hope you (jace hall) reply instead of an automated….computer thing..
Dear Cyrus,
First of all, YES, I do read and try to answer all the e-mail I get. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to it, but I really try to get to it all. No “automated….computer thing…” YET!
Now on to some answers.
Let me just say that it is an honor to hear that I inspire you. I appreciate you telling me that and although I don’t believe myself to be better than anyone else or in the business of trying to be “hey look at me I am all that,” it is always nice for any person to know that they are making a contribution to the world by inspiring someone else in a positive way. I am just glad that I am being moderately useful in some way! I am happy to be of service.
You mention that I seem to be rich and famous. Well, I can assure you that I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I still have to work, have a house payment and bills and etc. Yes, I have had some limited success but I still have a long way to go and would have to shift my focus if my desire was to become “money rich.”
While I am on the subject of “money rich” I’d like to offer a few thoughts.
I personally do not base my feelings of success or failure on pure economics. Some people do, and to each their own – but for me it is never about the sole pursuit of acquiring “money.” Certainly, what is worth doing is worth doing for money, but my life’s experience has taught me that the true value of one’s self-worth is not measured in gold pieces but in personal achievement instead.
There is nothing wrong with money. Obviously you need it to survive to a certain extent and that is ok. However, of the many people that I know who have more money than they can ever spend, few actually have positive feelings of self-worth. Quite the opposite actually and a lot of times this results in self-destructive behavior. Having lots of money can free up a lot of mental time, and people can use that mental time to hate themselves even more than they normally would. The image of having lots of money can seem to project that you can be happy and carefree, but I assure you that money alone doesn’t give you those things. So it is for these kinds of reasons, I simply do not pursue “having lots of money” as a sole goal.
Personal achievement, on the other hand, is nearly ALWAYS fulfilling. Money can come and go, people can forcibly take money from you, but personal achievement LASTS FOREVER.
It’s yours. Permanently. No one can take your achievements away from you. Your achievements are your truth and they will continue to pile up and build your self-esteem and help you feel your own self-worth and importance regardless of what others my think.
Personal achievement is one of the true values of life. And here is something to think about: Many people believe in some form of afterlife. Most of these beliefs revolve around a person somehow retaining their consciousness, essentially who they are, AFTER they die. If this is the case, then clearly the ONE THING YOU CAN TAKE WITH YOU AFTER YOU DIE ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES – SUCH AS YOUR PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS. So in my book, that makes something like personal achievements seem like a good investment (just in case.) One thing we all know for sure is that YOU CAN’T TAKE YOUR MONEY WITH YOU.
The best part about all this is that YOU decide what achievements you want to accomplish. There are no rules. There are no wrong answers. You just need to figure out what pursuits are important to you. You decide which things you enjoy doing and make you feel good. Then you just set some simple step by step goals and work toward them. That’s it.
And now for the biggest secret and most important point of all. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME ON THIS:
While it is important to set goals and work toward them you must NEVER measure yourself by whether or not you accomplish the goals you set.
What you must measure yourself by is whether or not you did your very best to TRY to accomplish them. It is CRITICAL that you understand the difference.
As long as you know that you are doing the best that you can to get to your goals, IT DOES NOT MATTER IF YOU ACTUALLY GET THERE. The personal achievement is ALWAYS IN THE EFFORT NOT IN THE RESULT. You will never feel bad about yourself if you truly know that you have been and are doing everything you can/could to reach your target.
The only time you will feel bad is if you know in your heart that you could have tried harder, and have a bunch of excuses. THAT is what kills you, not the fact that you didn’t achieve the end result.
So in summary, the basic goal you should have for all things you consider is this: JUST DO YOUR BEST. I MEAN REALLY DO YOUR BEST. If you do that, amazing things will happen for you – a lot of it will be unexpected awesome stuff. I promise. Remember, THE JOURNEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE DESTINATION IN ALL CASES.
I have written the long winded diatribe above in order to answer the next question you had for me. You tell me you are in school and you want to know what classes you should take to pursue a career in game design…
Most people would just tell you to take some set of standardized classes, pat you on the head and send you on your way, but I don’t want to do that. I want to teach you “how to fish” so you can eat for the rest of your life, instead of just “handing you a single fish” so you can eat for a day.
So here is my answer: It doesn’t matter what classes you take. Really. If you have an interest in game design, figure out what aspect of game design interests you most, set some simple goals that are interesting to you in that area (make them up!) and start doing your best to figure out how to get there and DO NOT STOP. There’s no formula. Buy a book, take whatever class you feel might apply, get some game that has an “editor” and start making maps. Grab a notepad and just start writing a design you believe in. All are stepping stones to your desired interest. Keep pursing it, step by step. You will get there. I promise – and if you don’t, as long as you keep giving it your ALL, you will not feel bad about it in any single way. There is no standard format to personal success other than doing your best at all times. That act alone instant makes your successful, every day.
There are no rules, only the limits of your own mind perceiving yourself trapped in some kind of pre-arranged societal program that everyone seems to buy into because they are told to and it seems easier – it’s not. Nothing worth having is easy to get. Prepare for pain and suffering and challenges and love every minute of it because when you look back you will realize that those are the fun parts!
Most people define themselves and their world by what they CAN’T do. Step one: Unlearn that. Define yourself by what you CAN do and know that you can do what you set your mind to. That is what I have always tried to do.
Case in point (I won’t get into the gritty details now but:) I had a less than stellar childhood, no money at all, and never took a computer class in my life – YET, I can program in BASIC, C, C++, MOS 6502, Motorola 6800 and Intel 8086 Assembly language. No classes, no teachers, just a desire for personal accomplishment in that area. If I can do that, ANYONE CAN.
Know this – He/She who is most determined in a battle will always eventually win no matter how strong the opposition.
Hope that helps!
-Jace
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