Storms Coming

The video game industry is still extraordinarily young. Its roots can only be traced back to the beginnings of modern computing in the 70’s. In comparison, film has been around for more than a century and even comics got their start in the 30’s.

And as such the industry was this weird, interesting mix of talent from all corners. One of the first developers I ever met was a level designer at Idol Minds, a small studio in Colorado. He had a degree in English Lit. A programmer I met touring one of the studios in Montreal used to work in taxes, he left after feeling like his soul was being destroyed. The lead artist at Funcom in Montreal used to be a professional actor, who fell into performance capture and then animation.

This great diverse set of talents gives the game industry a huge array of different skill sets and backgrounds. There were never any schools that offered a dedicated game development degree, the industry just picked up passionate people who had a drive to learn.

Now all that is changing. We were the fifth graduating class of students from Champlain College who have a Bachelor of Science in Game Design, Game Art, or Game Programming. We are the new generation. We grew up in the “modern console” age; games are part of our culture, part of our everyday life. Being able to go to college and study it as a viable degree shows how seriously the game industry is taken as a competitive field.

So what is going to happen?

Who knows?

Maybe more independent student made studios? That’s what we did, but even then we were an outlier. Half of our graduating class was able to get a job in the industry and that after our original freshmen class size for Electronic Game Design (EGD) was reduced to nearly 60, half of the 120 we started with.

Either way, by being immersed for so long in video games, after studying it for four years, we get to make our mark. A storm is coming, just wait, our generation has only begun to get started.