Originally Posted by MarkRyan
DigiPen can teach you a lot about what it takes to work in video game development. The school is hard-core focussed on mathematics and physics, though, and not really on design. You will learn how to be a great programmer, though, so long as you put a lot of priority and focus into the classes. You really do need to be ready to devote 12 hours a day, six days a week, minimum. A lot of students also take summer courses, and while summer sessions are usually a less intense than normal semesters they're still pretty busy, cramming in a semester's worth of material in just a couple of months.
One of the best things DigiPen does is incorporating team work. Every semester of GAME class has students split up into teams, where they all design a game together--beginning with a Game Design Document (GDD) that's typically 100+ pages--and then split up work between teammates. There's usually someone in charge of art, a director, someone doing AI, someone doing levels, physics, etc. Everyone I knew at DigiPen had to pick up slack from others who didn't do their work, every semester. Anyway, you'll definitely get a good feel for what goes into developing a video game, and that's definitely important for a game designer.
However, if you want to come out a game designer and actually have people hire you as a game designer, you'll need to do more than just finish DigiPen. Doing level design in your free time for games that provide editors, for example, is a good way to get used to design. It's also a good way to build up a potential portfolio to show to future employers.
You'd probably also want to try and get more design-oriented work when doing team projects at the school, such as doing level design, AI, and putting together the GDD. Though you won't want to do just design, and I would actually recommend starting out doing more technical stuff (programming) for your first year-to-two-years to make future years--and they get tough--less stressful. In your last two years I'd recommend going for the design-oriented positions, and even going for managing positions. You'll definitely want the experience of managing and directing the more complicated games developed in later years, and worry about getting programming basics down at the beginning of your education.
And again, DigiPen is a school designed to turned people into programmers. To be a kick ass game designer you're going to have to put in extra effort, both related to DigiPen work and on your own time. And of course, it's all about contacts! Juniors and seniors at DigiPen often get hired as interns at local development houses. There are actually quite a few up there in Bellevue/Redmond--Sucker Punch, NOA, Microsoft, Zombie, Sierra, to name a few. You'll have to make sure you use those opportunities to build relationships with people that can put you in a position to be a designer. DigiPen may teach some basic game design, but it's really up to you to become a designer that people want to hire.
