Hey Escapees, I'm in my last year of high school right now, and right about now, I need to decide what course I want to do in university. I'm stuck in a rut between software engineering and games designing, and I was wondering if you guys could give me the pros and cons of each course. I can't find many opnions about games design because it is fairly new in Australia. I have a pretty keen interest in both fields, but more swaying towards video games design. Although I hear that if you do video games designing, then it's a really mundane job.
Games designing?
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Do the software engineering. Game design can involve a lot of logic design and number crunching - the more you understand how a computer works from programming, the better you can design your game systems based on what computers can and can't do (or shouldn't) do.
Not only that, but it's more useful a skill outside of the game industry to have.
Heck, "game design" in itself is sometimes an ambiguous term. Is it the overview of the game, the combat system, inventory, spells, quest design, level design, or story design?
Not only that, but it's more useful a skill outside of the game industry to have.
Heck, "game design" in itself is sometimes an ambiguous term. Is it the overview of the game, the combat system, inventory, spells, quest design, level design, or story design?
Yeah that's the part I'm unsure of. I have very close to 0 artistic skill whatsoever, so I'm really only restricted to the either the coding or the project management side of games designing, unless there's another aspect of video games designing that doesn't involve art design or music (I refuse to do PRThriKreen said:
)To be honest, I have a lot of experience with high level programming, although it's with python, which has a lot of flaws unlike C++, but IMO it's only a matter of learning different coding syntax.
I went to a careers market for school recently, and there was a TAFE/College type institution that focuses on gaming. The lady there said that a lot of people take the one year course and then segue into Software Engineering or Computer Science. I'll probably choose software of comp-sci as apparently you spend an extra year learning how to deal with clients in software. That and comp-sci apparently isn't a valid qualification in some countries like America.
Same applies to software engineering. Game programming is more complicated, but depending on the software you're making, that can get complicated, too.ThriKreen said:
I am a software engineer (did just start though), and I can say unless you love programming, do not go into it. You can end up working long hours (coworker worked 79 hours last week), and it is very frustrating. You say you have a lot of experience with programming? What exactly have you done? Asking because I was one of the better programmers in my classes, and then when I got into the field it seemed like I knew next to nothing.
With languages, from my experience in looking, most business are looking for C# or JAVA (or legacy languages such as Ruby on Rails, COBOL, etc.). I know there are some places that use Python and C++, but not nearly as many. I have little experience with C++ and Python, but I can tell you trying to learn C++ was a bit more than just syntax changes. It is object oriented, but you have to do a ton more with it that other high level languages take care of for you.
As far as game design goes, they have people that are focused on programming, art, sound, etc. So you probably wouldn't have to worry about having to do something you aren't good with.
