Full Sail

[Gohron]

I hear they work your ass off for whole days and you sleep four hours a night.

Sounds like boot-camp.

[Dipstick]

Do not bother. All of these development jobs will end up in either Asia or Eastern Europe. Korean art studios or Crotian modeling firms are a lot cheaper than their American counterparts... and we already know what happened with all of the software development heading overseas.

Work conditions are no good, too. Low (and inconsistent!) pay, insane work hours, bosses (both with the development firm and with the publisher) that treat you like ignorant shit, and there is not a whole lot you can do -- bitch and you are dumped for one of the thirty young people with no life willing to take your place.

If that does not scare you, then go right ahead and sign up -- but you will wish you went for a more useful degree, like English.

One other note: These schools typically instruct people on how to be productive in their aspect of the videogame industry. This is useful, but what I would like to see is a more traditional academic program take a more academic angle on things. None of these programs teach people how to be good developers in an artistic sense, they just teach you how to get shit done in today's techolongy.

I'm not sure what their requirements are, but if your unable to obtain any info on your own for a $60,000 education perhaps you should just stick with BK.

IBTN -- do some of your own damn legwork.

-Dippy

[Mr-K]

I hear they work your ass off for whole days and you sleep four hours a night.

If that. My brother was telling me how he would have lab from 1 to 5.

AM

And then have to be back in class at like 10.

[Survival Kid]

Sounds like boot-camp.

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking.

[YellerDog]

Full Sail is great, if you're ok with summer camp. They're not properly accreddited (at least last time I checked), not really recognized, and are full of students who don't meet any kind of requirements whatsoever. Go there for a semester, then go to a real school when you run out of money.

If you aren't actively interested in programming, right now, don't even bother with it. Or any other game design school, for that matter. Waste of your time.

Just two cents, from an impartial observer.

[Master]

Here are my two cents: Get a real degree from a normal college.

You may think you know what you want to do now, but that often can change. With a regular degree you can do anything. Many of the game programmers I know went to school for English, and one to be a doctor.

Going to a specialized school like this robs you of the college experience, which IMO is much more important to being well-rounded socially, therefor making you more of a team-player and likable.

Just a thought.

[remnant]

Thanks for the ideas and opinions. I probally will go to a design school though, I just love games to much

[MarkRyan]

DigiPen is nationally accredited now. And you don't have to live in Florida (Washington is much nicer). I know a couple guys that just graduated from there, and had game dev jobs within months. Might look into that.

[dcm]

just to clear some rumors, full sail is fully accredited, never knowing it not being so

its 21 months - 31 months ( you fail out if you fail more than 10 classes, or fail a core class more than once)

you have class 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, 4 weeks of vacation a year - 2 for xmas, 1 spring , 1 summer

full sail has a placement department, but the students place themselves, the first team that graduated through the BS degree a few months ago got jobs lined up prior to graduation and never utilized the department and i beleive the same has been true for many groups after them.

i go to full sail, im in my senior term, and i have nothing but good things to say about the school, most of the rumors about the school are queers that couldnt cut it and are just bitter about it. one of their slogans says it perfectly, if you take your dream seriously, so will we (or something to that effect) - because it really is an amazing school if you go into it seriously and are willing to put in the work because they have a lot of amazing talent from all areas of the gaming industry that teach the classes.

[Tracer]

WHERE DO I SIGN UP. I WANT TO TIGHTEN UP THE GRAFIX ON LEVEL 3.