The Games Game December 2011

Each month, industry veteran Tom Sloper provides career guidance to game biz wannabes, newbies, and junior professionals with the goal of helping them break into the industry, and stay in. Submit a question to Tom for developer-oriented advice in this column (IGDA members only).

Feeling My Way

Hey Sloper,

I feel that the way for me to get into games is to get a game degree
I asked several of my friends, and that's the feeling I got from them to
I posted a poll on gamedev, and the feeling I got there was the opposite
So now Im all confused pls help
-- Feeling

Dear Feeling,

You're in the trap many young people are in today.  You don't have facts to illuminate your path, so you "feel" your way through life.  

When you say "feel" you're just saying "guess."  Guessing is not a good basis for making important decisions, especially important life decisions like what college to go to.  

But it appears that you aren't satisfied with your own guesses, which is good, since you are seeking confirmation elsewhere.  Only problem is, you are using a flawed technique.

Your friends are in the same boat as you.  Some of them may have read or seen things you haven't, but their life experience is about the same as yours, so when you ask them about what kind of degree you should get, they have to guess, just as you do.  

Then you say you went on gamedev and posted a poll.  I call that sort of poll a "mini-poll," because they rarely get more than 10 responses.  A scientific poll needs at least 100 inputs before its results are taken seriously.  Flipping a coin ten times will tell you nothing about probability. But when you post a mini-poll, you're rolling a die ten times, increasing the number of possible answers and decreasing even further the likelihood of obtaining useful information.  We keep thinking we can just throw a question out there, and the answer will come back from the hive mind.  But we as a species...? We're not there yet.

I know it seems logical that if one wanted to go into games as a career, that one ought to get a degree in games.  There are some good game degree programs, but there are also many overly expensive game degrees, and many for-profit game degrees, and some are of dubious value.  If you can find a worthy game program that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (that won't keep you paying for it until you retire), then that's fine.  But otherwise, you can simply go for an enjoyable degree at an affordable school near where you live, and everything will turn out fine.

The college question is the first difficult adult decision we have to make.  I recommend you go to your school guidance counselor.  He or she can walk you through the process.  My counselor helped me a lot.  I found it very frustrating.  I kept wanting him to just tell me what to do.  But he wouldn't.  He insisted I make the decision myself.  And he was right.  

We didn't have the internet then, but we do now.  Once you have it narrowed down to a few schools with the help of your counselor, you can do actual research on those schools.  You can collect real information.  You don't have to go by your feelings or your guesses, or the feelings or guesses of your friends, or by polling a few strangers on the internet.

Instead of feeling your way into adulthood, get some facts.

Please note that there is no guarantee that Tom will be able to respond to all the questions he receives. It is up to his discretion which questions he uses for this column. For further advice and resources, check out the IGDA's discussion forums, the Breaking In web site and the Students & Newbies Outreach section.

Tom's Bio

Tom Sloper's game biz career began over twenty years ago at Western Technologies, where he designed LCD games and the Vectrex games "Spike" and "Bedlam". There followed stints at Sega Enterprises, Rudell Design, Atari Corporation, and Activision. In 12 years at Activision, Tom produced 36 unique game titles (plus innumerable ports and localizations), designed four games, and won five awards. Tom worked for several months in Activision's Japan operation, in Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for designing, managing and producing Activision's "Shanghai" line. He is currently consulting, writing, speaking, teaching, and developing original games. Find out more at Sloperama.

© 2011 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.