Gaming College?

[Chrysocollus]

So...I'm going to graduate high school soon. I'm having difficulty finding a (respectable) college that teaches/specializes in video game arts. If you guys have any to recommend, I would appreciate suggestions. I'm mainly looking in northern California/the bay area, so those of you outside of the US/west coast will probably have no idea.

Thanks!

 

[burningdragoon]

There are some colleges with a or some focus on video game development and design (or whatever). I don't know what they are, but I believe Extra Credits had a video that mentioned some of it.

Now, calling it "video game arts" sounds like you don't really have any idea what it is you want. Do you want to do art for video games like concept art, modelling, etc? Do you want to "design" them? Do you want to do the programming?

For the first one, really any art school where you can focus one whatever type of art you want. For the second, I'd say check out Extra Credits. For the third one, a school with a good technical program would be good.

So really the first thing you have to do is actually determine what it is you want to actually do (or think you want to do).

 

[awesome_ninja]

I would say that if you want to go into video games industry, you should probably learn programming, for sure. I'm going into Computer Science at a local university to learn it (University of Alberta to be exact). If coding is not your thing, then, there are more specialized school that have courses just about video games. Some examples aer DIGIPEN, or Full SAIL. They are pretty darn expensive tho.

 

[Marowit]

If you're willing to explore beyond that area look into Champlain College in Burlington, VT. My younger brother goes there, and being so close to Montreal the school sets up a lot of internships and whatnot with studios located there.

Goodluck

 

[Chrysocollus]

Ugh...I want...to do it all. xD I want to program it...I'm still learning and struggling with a lot of code, but I've gotten far in a short year. I want to do the art, and I want to make them music. I want to write the story. In short, I don't want to specialize...XD I want to be awesome at them all, because I hate myself and I want to die. XD

I did see DIGIPEN. They seemed pretty sweet so I was thinking about it. I will look into Full SAIL and through old Extra Credits though. Thanks.

 

[devotedsniper]

I don't know if it's the same in the US but in the UK my university has a few gaming courses and from what i gather there generally split into different courses (e.g. AI and programming do Computer Games Programming BSc, or Computing Science BSc with gaming modules). I should warn you i chose introduction to Computer Games Programming as an optional for my Software Engineering BSc and it was very hard compared to standard programming, my assignment kept crashing so much so i gave up and just failed the module (did a different one the year after), not trying to discourage you just a friendly warning.

PS you should also be aware you will also more than likely HAVE to specialize in at least one area or else your knowledge will be to thinly spread to complete the assignments (in other words you'll struggle more if you don't focus on 1 or 2 areas instead of the whole thing).