Should You Get A Degree In Game Dev? (My Story)

this is my college degree and it pretty look wow thank you so much no I'm not very excited about it to be honest because it costs $35,000 in this video I really want to talk about something that I think we all need to grapple with and that is is going to game design school actually worth it is it worth your time is it worth I mean most importantly all of that debt all of that money thank God I'm not in debt right now but a lot of a lot of young adults are and I want to talk about whether it's actually worth it so before we get started I want to talk about something that's actually really relevant here and that is Skillshare honestly guys everything that I ever learned about game development everything I learned from game design is just searching on Google taking tutorials and watching YouTube videos now the cool thing about Skillshare is it takes all of those things and put it puts it into one place for a really great price so if you guys want to take a unity course or a Photoshop course audio design courses or writing courses and storytelling courses they're all there on Skillshare it's really a great platform so if you guys want to get to three months of Skillshare click the link below the first 500 people to do so will get two free months on Skillshare comm thank you so much Skillshare for sponsoring this video now let's talk about whether college is actually for you so before I answer the question of whether it was actually worth it to go to school and whether it's worth it for you to go to game design school I'd like to sort of go back to when I started my career when I started being a game developer and that was actually when I was 18 years old and that was like right after high school the summer after I graduated high school I made a game called coma and I launched this game on Newgrounds this was probably one of the most exciting summers of my life because before that I was you know I was working as a I work I worked as a concession stand person at a movie theater and I was fired from that job and then I got another job working as a shoe salesman I was working pretty ridiculously boring jobs and then suddenly I was able to make money with this small flash game called coma and I remember going to the pool with my friends that summer and I told them guys hi Brad honestly I said guys I just made you know 500 bucks or whatever with this game called coma and they were blown away that you could make money just releasing a game online and so I quit my job and I decided I was going to make games but the weirdest thing happened and this is true we'll talk about this in a second when you're younger when you're like 18 to 25 when your brain is still finishing up development sometimes you don't put together life events piece them together and come to solutions sometimes you just on autopilot make bizarre decisions and so right in front of me was this goldmine of making games I loved doing it it was profitable it was awesome why not just start a company and go for it instead I decided I needed to go to college so I went to college after that summer and I decided to get a degree in basically graphic design although to be honest when I met with the Dean he told me we were gonna do some some game development stuff and so I went to college under the impression that I was going to learn some game design and some graphic design and I spent 4 years of my life learning about stuff that honestly I swear I do not use now it was basically just printing stuff inks and printing a packaging and I was very confused and so I spent most of my lectures on my computer making games I'm not even kidding I would open up my laptop because in college now everybody's got their laptops open I would open up my laptop and I would work inside of unity while the teacher would lecture and believe it or not you know I kept all my scholarships I did find because I would just study the notes before the exams so I be asked my way through college and that's not me bragging that's actually me kind of making fun of college because college is one of those those things that you can kind of BS your way through especially for programs that are BS and we'll talk about that in a second as well so I be asked my way through college I used the degree a little bit and I'm grateful for the degree in the sense that I was able to get a graphic design job and provide for me and my wife but after those three years were up after I was I was like I'm done being a graphic designer I want to start my own company I quit my job and started a video game company it's called at most games and I've released two games or one game and we're about to release a game in a couple months and the rest is history right that that degree is is completely irrelevant I wasn't even sure where that degree was I had to go looking for it but yeah I'm not sure the degree is completely at all relevant anymore III don't see the point I don't even know what it was for so here's the thing about looking back at that degree and again this isn't a game design degree but the same things apply for game design most of what was achieved with that degree is worthless now there are a few things that are valuable but most of what was achieved was completely worthless the first thing that was done let me let me say that again Thomas go back yeah four years four years of getting that degree I could have taken that away and spent four years building a company making games I could have spent that time especially if you're the kind of person who's very entrepreneurial and you can sort of self start and find willpower and learn how to do things on your own those four um that's the way I am those four years I could have spent building a company and on top of that all of that money could have been spent maybe on the business maybe on other things to help build up my education in a different way but instead I did what culture told me to do and I hate to sound like a anarchist or whatever but don't just listen to what people are telling you to do it's so easy to just close your eyes and coast through life letting blind people lead you you don't necessarily have to go to college so looking back and thinking of the question of whether you should go to game design school my answer is not yet how how's that not yet there's something that we're all forgetting and that is that when we're young our brains aren't fully developed yet we're not fully matured and I'm not saying I'm fully there yet but I'm definitely more aware of my skills and my talent and what I can achieve then I was before I was like 25 years old I'm 28 now but after 25 that's when I started to gain more confidence and gain more entrepreneurial skill before 25 I wasn't fully aware of what I was doing so it is a very dangerous time honestly to make a decision of selling your soul to the devil I mean that's kind of what you're doing with these banks when you're getting these loans do you really want to make a commitment when you're 21 years old 22 years old actually no it's even younger when you're 18 do you really want to make a commitment to 40,000 to $100,000 of school debt when you're not even fully aware of what you're capable of ultimately I think that's just a really bad idea and I honestly think it's part of some weird conspiracy of these these universities capitalizing on immaturity but also these people are considered adults we're all adults when were 18 so we can make that kind of a decision for ourselves but that's a really big decision to make I had no idea what I was capable of when I was 18 what I do know is I was scared I was scared that I wasn't gonna be smart I was scared that I wasn't gonna be successful I was scared that I needed an institution to tell me how to be and to sort of put a badge on me or give me a trophy and say you're worth it you're worth it to your employer and that's really kind of what my degree did now some degrees obviously like my wife's degree to be a nurse that's really valuable and that's really important you should go get that degree but there are a lot of degrees out there especially something like game design where I'm not sure and in fact I'm pretty positive it doesn't really matter what matters is your portfolio when people reach out to me for potential internships I do not care about your school I care about your portfolio and I'm trying to be nice and say like go make some great content I don't I don't need you to spend money I just need you to make great content I don't need you to spend money on a degree content is what matters so ultimately I think the best answer for you is not yet and the reason why I say not yet is you don't really know what you need a lot of you don't know what you need what you want what you want in the future or who you even are I know it's hard I know all your friend all of your friends are going to cool universities and they're gonna have parties and we're gonna have so much fun without you right well it's only a party for four years and then after that it's dead and it's perhaps not even using your degree so instead of dreading the idea of not being able to be with your friends and not being able to be in this community of partying which that's kind of lame if you're paying that kind of money for parties instead of thinking that way perhaps tell yourself I'm gonna wait a year or two years and I'm going to try to learn this craft on my own I'm trying I'm gonna try and get plugged into a community of game developers on my own it is the best time to be alive because with the internet with social media with discord with all of these different platforms to grow in relationships with people who like minded it is the perfect time to not go to college to consider waiting and to consider trying to do it on your own now there are also plenty of other platforms like Skillshare where you can learn skills instead of going to college and paying a premium for a degree additionally what you can do while you wait is just go to a tech school and believe it or not that's what I did for one year I went to Greenville tech and it was the only decision I look back on that was a good one when it comes to college that was such a good decision because that cost me like fifteen hundred bucks just just wait obviously listen to your parents or whatever but can you just wait a little bit consider waiting a year or two go to a tech school and don't be afraid see a lot of your friends might look at you and say oh you're you're you're quitting you're giving up you're not going to college like I am I'm going to this university or that university and you're staying in your hometown they might look down on you but in fact you're making one of the bravest most most difficult decisions and and it's the decision that a lot of people don't want to make but they really should make so consider making that decision and ultimately guys I think it'll pay off because you're gonna learn in those years of who you are and what you really want maybe you do need to go to school maybe you're the kind of person who really does need a school to help guide you in the direction you need to go but if you're the kind of individual like me who can self start who can look for answers online and build a community on my own that's probably the best route for you now I will say one side note here before we close the thing is is that going to game design school is actually really great for building a community for getting to know people to network I'm not going to pretend that that's not a real thing but is it worth thirty thousand dollars which let's be honest is probably to be more than that is it really worth that and my answer is I'm not so sure because I've built an incredible community believe it or not I've built my community and that includes a plenty of my network that's helped grow my business I've built that through email through social media I didn't go to college for that the economy is different now technology is different now and I think universities are scared I think we all recognize and we're slowly recognizing that we can achieve things on our own we don't really need to spend that much money for something like this in the end guys I hate to say it but it is just a piece of paper at least in my case in your case maybe not but for me it was just a piece of paper thanks guys for watching I really appreciate you please hit subscribe hit the like button and leave a comment I'll try and answer as best as I can thank you so much talk to you later bye [Music]

Channel: Thomas Brush

Views: 96,097

Keywords: thomas, brush, game design college, game dev college, college for game design, indie game development tips, indie game developer tips, marketing for indie games, unity development, how to make games, indie game tutorial, start your own game studio, unity vs ue4, unity vs unreal engine 4, unity vs ue, unreal, game, engine, unity 5 vs unreal engine 4, unreal engine graphics, ue4, vs, game development beginner, beginner, school

Id: cUvjDOWYNY8

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019