Hi all, this is more directed at folks who are hiring / work in bigger companies . If I make a few good indie games does that look better then a college degree when looking for a game industry job or is it all indie from here on out
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Edit: This is not trolling. This is exactly what they will tell you.
Yep.
But the truth is that there is isn’t a simple answer to the question you asked. Even with just a college degree, there will be a portfolio. Ultimately it will be based on the quality of the work regardless of where it came from. But people who are serious about games will have a body of work outside of a college program. If you have never built any games, then one day decided to go to school for it and can only present classwork for your portfolio, pretty slim chance of getting work right out of college (unless it is really outstanding, which it almost never is).
The trick is though, we will almost always go with someone with experience in the industry over someone without. I know that sounds like a catch-22, but the reality is that most of the time hiring is done to replace someone who left/changed roles or to ramp up production. That means the person hired has to be able to the hit the ground running. Someone who can code may not understand to properly code a game, or a great artist may not know how provide optimized production ready game assets. And tech/tools/methods change a often. It is hard to fully grasp it until you have actually done it. But once you get in the door, there is always plenty of work.
From what I have seen, the degree is required but is just a piece of paper. Here in Northern Europe, the degree will get an appointment for a job, but they will look at what you’ve done. Fact is, without the degree you do not get th einterview, without the portfolio, you do not get the job.
This is simplified, there might be other factors involved.
So, my conclusion, you need to get the degree and in the meanwhile, you develop your portfolio.
you def need both. Without my college degree, your resume gets thrown out, and without a game or 2 under your belt, you will not get a call back…unless you specialize in something like AI, graphics programming or physics. When i was in college, i was on the basketball team, and i still made games on the side…writing them from scratch. Theres no excuses for you not to have both, esp with unity around. Just make games…they dont have to be unique, or even all that great, just finish completed. Make them as best as you can, and learn all you can in the process. It will pay off in the interviews, because they ask all types of general comp sci questions (for programmers) and game specific ones as well.
If it’s in the same country, then experience is more desirable than a degree.
If you’re looking to work outside of your country, you’ll likely need a degree (and the experience).
Experience > all.
The portfolio will make you hire or not, and your degree will set your salary :).
… if you don’t want to spend time negociating 
I don’t see why they couldn’t just leave it, “porque no las dos?” that would be funnier!!! XD
With serious employers that don’t hire exclusively through HR grunts: Experience > Degree
In the lamest terms; experience tells them you can do the job. A degree tells them you “could” do the job.
However there are 2 types of experience;
- Professional
- Personnal
Once you get your foot into the door with the professional experience, the degree becomes practicaly irrelevent unless you were working outside the required field or it is a very specialised high-grade field (AI, Graphic Prog., … )
So here you go. Thats the ground rules in general. But remember, 80% of getting the job is the interview, not a piece of paper.
The unfortunate sad reality is that more often than not:
“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
That tells you a lot about the relevance of your degree.
This reminds me of a LinkedIn post, actually. “Want a job in the games industry? Give yourself one.”
Fortunately, Unity is a pretty easy-to-use game engine. The hard part is honing your creativity to make an approachably good experience. I’ve got two (completed) attempts in my signature, funny enough.
In the gaming industry? I’d say that experience is more important than anything. The more completed and published titles you have under your wing the better.
I don’t think anyone cares about degree in this field. If you get a game-dev degree and the institution did not bother to get you some internship you may never get a job in the field.
In other industries your resume may entirely be dismissed if you have not listed a degree, though (unless you somehow managed to accumulate over 12 years of experience.)
If youre a programmer, having a degree is important. You need to have a solid understanding of coding/structure/design/etc, which if you go free and just create an indie portfolio, you probably wont have.
Its easy to hack stuff together by yourself, so experience is important. Having a broad range of experience will help as well as it will make your skills more dynamic.
Then again, i’m probably going to finish a degree in Poli Sci …
Tbh unless your degree says the EXACT words “Computer Science” or “Software Engineering” you will get software filtered into junk (Standard practice).
Ohh darn
I can’t speak for everywhere, but any of the developers based here in California, you must have both. Without a relevant degree in computer science or some related field, they won’t even bother giving you an interview. I had this explained to me by one recruiter for Rockstar (then Angel Studios) that they believe if you don’t have the wherewithal to finish a degree, you can’t be trusted to be reliable at anything. Of course, the degree only opens the door. They still want to see experience, and almost everyone seems to want to only hire people with at least one shipped title to their credit. No one said getting a job in game development is easy.
Well, I guess I can work at Starbucks with my poli sci degree and part- time game dev on Android and IOS .
What? I thought there was a guy on these forums who was a concept artist at Rockstar, who is self taught? Maybe it is different for programmers.