[gameprogrammer] Grumble gripe... my class was canceled.
- From: Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Gameprogrammer Mailing List <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:38:34 -0500
As many of you know I teach a class on game programming at Austin
Community College. There are even a few of you out their who have taken
it. For the first time I can remember it was canceled because not one
student signed up for the class. I have had classes canceled because
their weren't enough students, but I have never had zero students sign
up for a class. The next day I read a student game postmortem linked off
of slashdot that said that one of the problems they had was that they
couldn't get enough programmers to join the project. It seems there were
very few programmers in that school and the programmers were all busy
doing their own projects.
I checked at ACC and I see that all the art, design, and production
classes are full, or nearly full, and that the programming classes are
all empty, or nearly empty.
I asked Bob McGoldrick (my boss at ACC) about this and he says that yes,
most of the students are in the design track. He has trouble getting
students for the programming track and they don't stay around very long,
they take one or a few programming classes and then they leave the
program.
Now it could be that my class sucks and the word of mouth about it has
made people refuse to sign up for it. OTOH, my evaluations by the
students who take my classes mark me as one of the most highly rated
teacher in the program. Way above the ACC average.
So we have a pattern where there are lots of students learning game
design and production and very few who can write the code, or even the
scripts, needed for a modern game engine. Sounds like this is creating a
great opportunity for game programmers. It also support the pattern I
have seen in the past; there are lots of programmers who can do art and
3D modeling but very few artists who can do programming.
Oh well, I have two nights a week free that I wasn't expecting to have
free.
Any comments?
Bob Pendleton
P.S.
Yeah, this is a person grumble about the state of the world. I really
love teaching my classes at ACC and it disappoints me when they get
canceled. Anyone in the Austin area interested in a game development
study group?
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