for the past four months i’ve been attending the guildhall, a videogame design school. it’s been a very frustrating experience, as the curriculum is focused on job placement within the industry rather than teaching good design. after four months of butting heads with conservative instructors, i was finally asked to leave.
“we’re not going to change, and you’re not going to change,” the director of the school told me.
the problem with the program, to put it as briefly as i probably will over the next few months, is that it was built for the industry and not for the students. it “prepares students” for the industry by molding them into exactly the kind of workers big publishers are looking for: the program simulates crunch time all the time, so that graduates won’t complain when being asked to sacrifice their own time for the schedule. as others have pointed out, this type of curriculum favors the existing dominant paradigm of the industry: young males with no children or family to depend on them (only two of my classmates were attempting to raise children while attending the school, and just a handful more were women). the problem, obviously, is that the industry will never change when the school provides exactly what it demands.
if you’re interested in having me write or build a game for you, now would be a perfect time to contact me. my email address can be found in the sidebar at the right of this page. this also seems like a good time to point out that there’s a “donate” button on that sidebar too.
i feel like a tremendous weight’s been lifted from my shoulders, but that’s small comfort when the ground’s opened up beneath my feet.
27 comments
that sucks! those schools always seem to be more about training than education, perfect for getting a job but not great for learning something..
It may sound weird to say, but I envy your position here – you were in a program that was lousy for you and you didn’t take it sitting down.
I’m about to complete a five-year undergraduate program in Software Engineering in which I learned very little, and have been frustrated the whole time… but the fact that there’s never been any event strong enough to push me somewhere else meant that I sat through it, like the protagonist of Kurosawa’s “Ikiru”, just biding my time.
As someone on the other side of the glass, let me send my encouragement, whether you decide to go to another school or straight into industry. You’re going to learn more this way than the other, I’m sure.
i understand your frustrations as well. i’ve got a cert from guildhall that i’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about!
Just wanted to say that I feel your pain. I tried computer science ’cause I wanted to create videogames, but after I saw the way the industry is, all I could do was run away in disgust. I tried a second degree in Literature in order to explore games as narrative media, but I happed to spawn myself in the meantime and ended up having to drop school and get a job as a systems administrator to feed the baby.
Games could be so much more than they are, but the market is too happy milking the same old macho escapism to explore them. Thank you for not bowing down to the pressure, and for the great work with GQ and everything.
And how! I actually teach a game design course, but I make it pretty clear to my students that we’re having fun and this isn’t how the “big industry” works. Of course they ask me what future potential the course material has.
I say, “Go to tigsource.com and find out for yourself.”
I think you did the right thing :) you may feel the ground opening now but if you continued you probably would regret it in the future. As you can see from everyone’s comment, you have an army of supporters right here.
@Raigan: Well, that is the popular demand, most of my classmates (and by that I mean everyone except me) that want to go to uni/college just want to get it over with and find a job, not actually learn anything. Sadly, even my parents believe that is the best way, they think I shouldn’t learn what I like, just go to uni, get a degree, and then a job, that’s all. Companies like it too, workers are less independent this way. It SUCKS. And that Caps Lock was intended, yes.
It must be disheartening to be rejected by this school. I can imagine that, even if one can see how the school’s aims might differ from yours, or from what you see is right, that it could still be a blow to your confidence.
If this is the case, and for whatever it’s worth, I just want to reassure you that, from reading your blog posts, I would say you already understand proper game design. In fact, I have to wonder why you’d think you’d need a school to teach this to you. Mighty Jill-Off is already the toast of the blogosphere. I keep running into links to it in unexpected places.
So, previously expressed sympathies.
Thinking about your description of the outlook. I think a key is enabling fact that many boys just love playing games and love the idea of being in the industry — plus they might not have the life commitments or desire for balance that other demographics do.
(You know, looking at the wikipedia page for Harvey Pekar… I kind of wish we said “underground” for games rather than “indy”)
Right now there seems to be a fairly profound gap with large, realistic looking games on one side and casual games and almost all indy games on the other. The gap isn’t eternal or impassable (musing, it seems like user generated content in Second Life might point to how to bridge it) but even as a die-hard retro-oriented gamer who loves writing little games I have to admit that a GTA IV or Mercenaries will be a different and often deeper experience than stuff a tiny or one person team can do.
Anna gained +100 indie game designer points!
Anna has leveled up! Anna is now a complete and total indie badass.
Your experience describes a crap-load of the game development programs out there. Good for you on getting out.
Heh, one thing I was wondering about, because it’s what my (non-game) dev team uses, is did they talk about “scrum”? I guess a lot of game development houses use it. (It’s theoretically meant to prevent slave-driving death marches, but there’s nothing stopping it from being abused really)
i work at a fairly big game company and everyone i’ve told this to is amazed that any program would pull an outrageous stunt like that.
these game schools are oftentimes worse than the real industry; even on big projects you can always find small ways to add your input and make things better, but not if you’ve been trained to give up and do what you’re told. game school degrees are also on no way necessary, or even preferred, when looking for jobs.
so good on ya. don’t fuckin’ look back.
MORE TIME FOR ME
Yeah. Well, Guildhall is probably better on this dimension than, say, Digipen. But at least from my impressions of your online persona, SMU does not sound like a good fit. The Copenhagen ITU program, or closer to home, SCAD, might be better.
URGH. That school sounds horrible. If all they’re going to teach you is how to be a mindless drone, there’s no point at all.
Good luck!
I’m sorry that happened, but the fact is that you don’t need Guild Hall. You’re insightful and creative on your own; Guild Hall ended up being nothing more than a socially acceptable way to go a bit into debt in order to spend all your time focusing on what you care about. It should have been a better experience and pushed you in new directions, but it didn’t, and that’s not your fault.
Create your own experience of what Guild Hall _should_ have been. Find a way to support yourself on a part-time job and continue your self-guided studies in your spare time.
@Jon – I hope you’re right but you can kind of say the same thing about a lot of types of education, but still, certificates and degrees can be a help in getting people to recognize what you know.
So, are you going to break your lease? Heading back to wherever you were from (I don’t remember)? Maybe we’ll see each other on the Brawl WFC… best of luck.
I guess I’ll have to thank you for scouting out Guild Hall; I’ve been on and off considering it for a long time, and now I think I have a good idea. It’s a shame how it worked out, and a shame really that the state of game development education is how it is. Hope the experience helps you find your true path (yes, that’s a reference).
Hi!
I myself am a student @ The Guildhall currently and while I do not pretend to know what happened in your case, I do have to defend the school somewhat.
Now mind you I cannot speak to the LD side of this, me being a programmer, but from what I’ve seen there are a few very talented and smart professors even for LD that more than inspire the students towards creativity. Their lectures (at least those we shared) were always highly insightful …
But that isn’t my point. While I admire your stance and striving for a change in the industry, you have to know that getting into the industry and into a position with some actual “power” are two very different things. The first can be achieved with a BS and ends usually by you being grinded through and spat out after a few years, while the other is very hard to achieve w/o an education such as the one provided by The Guildhall.
All the students pay a lot of money just for the ticket into such a position and it seems to me that is the only way to change the industry – from within. You cannot expect the school to first take large sums of money from the students and then teach’em “idealistic” design that will do exactly nothing for their chances of getting that job where they can actually change the industry from within.
I will be the first one to admit that there’s a lot of flaws in the Guildhall system, but so far (and I am more than half-way through) I have never felt that I am being made into a “mindless drone” or that I wouldn’t get the full extent of the information – the good, the bad and the ugly of the industry. Things not working are being pointed out to us together with solutions for them that work in the hope that once we are the “leaders of the industry” (as we are groomed to be) we will be able to change it.
So again, I am sorry for what happened to you and I really cannot speak for the LD track, but from where I am standing, this Guildhall-bashing really misses the point. The industry will never change from the outside, it needs to be changed from within and for that you first need to learn to play by their rules. And those are harsh, I admit …
Marco1475 wrote:
> the other is very hard to achieve w/o an education such as the one provided by The Guildhall.
Excuse me, but that is bullshit. Maybe that’s what you are being told, but of all the people I know of who are in “positions of power”, exactly none of them went to vocational training schools like the Guildhall. They were all self-taught (often starting with actual non-game degrees from good universities, but often not).
> You cannot expect the school to first take large sums of money from the students and then teach’em “idealistic” design…
Wait, why not? Isn’t this what real universities do all the time? There is a long-standing tradition of academia making huge contributions to industry, even if, at first glance, it is not obvious how a particular academic program or viewpoint is relevant. Universities understand this and it is an important part of what they are. Going to Berkeley for Computer Science is a very different thing from, say, learning to program at DeVry Technical Institute.
This is even more so in the games industry, and especially with game design, because it’s a creative pursuit. The standouts are the ones with strong ideas and the ability to execute on them by any means necessary (orthodox or unorthodox), not the ones who are taught to put the square peg into the square hole.
A school like The Guildhall or Digipen is not training you to become a powerful Executive Vice President or the founder of a startup that will change the industry. They are training you to be what EA, Activision and all the other big guys want a constant supply of: people who know the basics of game implementation, have familiarity with the tools, and will shut up and do what they are told for as little money as possible.
That’s fine — there’s no reason you can’t start from there and work your way into a more powerful / more interesting / more industry-changing position — but don’t have any illusions that the school is training you for this, because they are not. They are training you to be a Footsoldier, not a General.
WHAT THE HELL IS JOHNATHAN BLOW DOING HERE
I want to chime in here on several issues. For the record, since the relationship Anna had with her fellow students was a topic of speculation at Gamer’s Quarter a few times,(not that I’m lurking or anything…), Anna’s issues seemed to be with the faculty. She was quite well liked by me and all the other students (as best as I can tell- yet I don’t know a single soul who disliked her). We were sad when she left.
Although we could all tell that there was a real resistance from the start to the Guildhall’s goals v. Anna’s goals, we respected her because she got her work done on time and with high quality.
What I also wanted to address is this unfortunate desire, not by Anna, but by other people who don’t have any insider knowledge about The Guildhall to throw the rest of us under the bus as mindless drones that don’t give a fig about artistry, good game design, and video games as an art form. I’m not writing this comment at any one person, but rather at the general tone of the comments here and at the Gamer’s Quarter.
In my experience, projects at Guildhall are a fierce competition of ideas. We take our projects very personally. We look at other students work and try (in a friendly way) to “one up” it. We take absolutely every creative inch the profs give us, and sometimes then some. I see so much talent here. I see plenty of original and outside the box thinking. Maybe we’ll all be nameless machines, but I would actually be surprised if a good majority of the level designers in our class ended up as game designers and senior level design people. The talent is that good.
Beyond all that, we care just as much about video games as a medium as anyone out there. We play all the same obscure, indie things as anyone else, pay too much money for import titles, read the literature, and we think of ourselves as artists.
For whatever reason, we just decided we wanted to take this particular course to get our foot in the door. There are other courses to take, and I respect those. I would just hope that some folks out there would also respect those who make the choice to go to a graduate school, just as much as we respect those who do not.
Once again this is less a comment about Anna’s situation, and more of a defense of the Guildhall *students* themselves. Rage against the machine, but leave us out of it.
Jonathan Blow wrote:
> Maybe that’s what you are being told, but of all the people I know of who are in “positions of power”, exactly none of them went to vocational training schools like the Guildhall.
Yes, that is true. However, when those people started out, how many vocational training schools existed? The Guildhall and DigiPen, to name a few, are relatively new (Guildhall is only 5 years old) so of course the amount of people in key positions with this kind of education is almost non-existent.
> There is a long-standing tradition of academia making huge contributions to industry, even if, at first glance, it is not obvious how a particular academic program or viewpoint is relevant.
Yes, but there are hardly any universities with such a specialized target industry. CS graduates will spread out into multiple industries, while Guildhall graduates are “bound” to the gaming industry. Furthermore, no university’s teachings will be so far removed from the industry standard as was suggested here and elsewhere.
The industry works in a certain way and a few idealistic graduates won’t change it. Guildhall would be very much remissive of its duties were it to disregard the current way of doing things and teaching us the “correct” way. (Note the quotation marks, since there is no such thing as an ultimately correct way.)
> The standouts are the ones with strong ideas and the ability to execute on them by any means necessary (orthodox or unorthodox), not the ones who are taught to put the square peg into the square hole.
Sorry, but I disagree. The standouts are not the ones with the great ideas who force them through, disregarding the limitations and shortcomings, but those who embrace the limitations and create something extraordinary within those. Sitting down and coming up with a great idea is easier than getting a set of rules that need to be fulfilled (i.e. FPS, water, aliens) and creating something fresh there.
> They are training you to be what EA, Activision and all the other big guys want a constant supply of: people who know the basics of game implementation, have familiarity with the tools, and will shut up and do what they are told for as little money as possible.
No, those people are the ones they can get right of school, with their BS in CS – they take ‘em, teach ‘em the tools in a few months and use them to create a lot of content in a min-numbing work, which eventually leaves them burnt out and useless after a few years, when they are replaced by newer, younger “droids.”
I went to the Guildhall to avoid exactly that a so far they’ve lived up to all my expectations. There is a big difference between teaching students the trade, with all its ugly and shadowy sides, and making them into “footsoldiers.”
> That’s fine — there’s no reason you can’t start from there and work your way into a more powerful / more interesting / more industry-changing position [..]
Yes, there is a reason – the one I explained above. While the difficulty of getting into the game industry does fluctuate, the amount of people who make it from QA / low level entry position into something resembling power is abysmally small. The paradigm is changing and schools like the Guildhall do give you a huge advantage in becoming a “general.” And don’t worry, the hiring history / positions the Guildhall graduates are now in, speak for themselves.
I know how you feel. I just finished a two year education which gave me absolutely nothing, creatively.
Well, there’s always something to be learned, even if it’s not what you might have expected.
Me? I learned i’ll never live with two guys i don’t know ever again… EVER.
Hello Gustav :) Come to Pixelation once in a while.
My experience with privately funded education on subjects that have to do with art is that it’s not there for those that are heavily invested in the arts, have initiative and personal goals, the inner drive to learn (you). It is there for those that lack some or most of these qualities and need to have their hand held through a process – which they largely resent – that will leave them barely capable. The atmosphere that is extuded from this process naturally doesn’t welcome people of the first type I described.
What you could learn there for large amounts of money you can learn on your own, you can hone in the company of like-minded people on and off line and you will perfect due to the scrutiny of your audience, not your teacher. That’s how I feel, and I dropped out of art school and never looked back.
Don’t take it too hard, it’s for the best.
I guess what’s important is to keep making games. Now that you don’t have to keep up with silly school assignments, think about all the games that you could make in this time. Everything that your assignment criteria forbade you from making, now’s the time to do it.
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