Just wanted to ask actual game designers this: Do you need a college education/ Major to get into video game design? If so, what school did you go to for it?
I'm interested in learning more about how to possibly join this career since I've been such an avid gamer for years. I know the industry has a darker side (like everything in life) but If anyone could just feed my curiosity that would be awesome. Thank you 
So, someone in game dev here, and someone who went to university for it.
First question: technically no. But technically you don't need one to found Microsoft either, and I likewise doubt you would be successful starting your own OS company.
As for schools, I am assuming US schools, and am not aware of any big ones elsewhere. I went to RIT in New York, it had a pretty good program; Digipen is another notable name, as is SMU Guildhall. Check the rankings for others.
So, with that out of the way, what MagmaMcFry said, but more. Can you make a game, or at least something mostly resembling one, without the help of anyone else but the internet? If not, you don't have the understanding of games necessary to design games. Moreover, there's hundreds of people for any given design position, and if you can't show things you built yourself, you don't have a chance against those who can.
I graduated a couple years back from RIT's Game Design and Development major, with a strong focus on programming, and went into the industry within a month. I later left and went to another job, which happened to be the first I bothered applying at. Currently, I get a decent amount of cold calls for industry (and other programming) jobs. So if you can become a decent programmer capable of putting together a game engine from scratch, that's your fate. And when you don't want to work in the industry any more? Well then you're a programmer still (and probably a really good one too, since game programming is pretty intense), which is enough for a comfortable and secure upper-middle class life outside the industry.
On the other hand, I know people who graduated in my class with a strong focus on design. A rare few of them have good jobs. Some of them are working at the sort of place you wouldn't want to be a designer. Some of them aren't working. For most of them, there is no job security, and they may have trouble finding their next job. Usually that depends entirely on how much professional networking they did. As they get older and want to settle down, they largely won't be able to, as there is no such thing as a stable job in the game industry. (A previous coworker had never been at a studio longer than 3 years, having worked at half a dozen of them, so any given job can not be expected to last longer than a stay at university. You simply can't start a family under such conditions, since your income and health insurance may not be around 9 months from now.) Neither will they have much luck in leaving the industry without changing what they do entirely: nobody but game studios have any use for game designers. So not only is it a Catch-22, but you will come to discover that the thing you just pried open to stick yourself in was a bear trap as well.
But basically, "game designer" is this generation's "astronaut" or "movie star" in terms of jobs. Everybody thinks they want to be one; everybody thinks they are not just above average, but in the top tenth of a percent necessary to get in, and almost none of them will. However the most telling statistic is the average length in the industry. The average game industry career length is approximately a mere 5 years last I heard. You will not survive on it for your entire life even if you do get in, and if you don't have a viable skill for an exit plan, expect to spend the rest of your life working at Walmart.
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Topic: Video Game Design (Read 2455 times)