Communications of the ACM

University CS departments are incorporating game design and development to prepare their students for the game industry's expectations.

Christopher Parrinello

The fact that game companies refuse to interview candidates who learned Java as their first programming language says more about the game industry rather than whether or not computer science graduates are well prepared to succeed in the game industry.

The problem is that game industry jobs are fewer in number than the explosion of game programmer schools and degrees would lead you to believe. As a result, the game industry creates artificial barriers such as the "no Java knowledge" to keep the supply of qualified software engineers down and salaries up. The next barrier is going to end up being "no game programming degrees" at this rate.

Is the game industry truly that unique that it requires a separate degree? Aren't most jobs in computing fields cross-disciplinary? A software engineer working on a website might communicate with a graphics design department, sales department, marketing department and IT department to develop a website that meets the needs of all of the stakeholders. Instead of trying to meet the needs of a relatively small industry compared to the industries that require employees with computing knowledge, why not just add a "large team project" requirement to the normal computer science degree where graduates will have experience with version control, asset management, etc.? I think many schools already offer this under a "software engineering" degree but those probably don't bring in the enrollment and money that a degree in game programming does.