I’ve been getting a lot of email and complements on my game career guide article, as well as some questions concerning various items. I wanted to address one question in particular though, because it comes up very frequently on forums and now in my email box. The question is this:

Is school (x) good? or Does school (x) have a good game program?

One of the things I tried to address in my article is that the first form of the question is unanswerable. Good is very subjective. The second question is just phrased poorly. Usually, when a person asks that, they are asking one of two very different questions. The first is “If I go here, will I get a job in the game industry when I get out?” and the second is “If I go here, will I learn what I want to learn?” Though both of these questions are answerable, they are not usually answerable by the people that they are asked to, namely game industry professionals.

Professionals are really the wrong people to ask these questions to. Why? Because, unless they’ve had personal experience with the program, they’re not going to know about it and they won’t be able to tell you anything. Worse, if they have ties to another program, they may lead you away from the one you’ve asked about and (through personal bias) lead you to a school you may not be happy at, which (as my article explains) is worse than not going to school at all!

So, whom should you ask this question to? Honestly, it’s a question for the school itself. Asking the school for their placement rate of graduates will help you understand whether it is likely that you will get a job after graduation (though, remember, it’s not the best indicator). Asking for as much information you can about all of the classes you’ll be taking there (schedules, descriptions, syllabuses if you can get them) will give you an idea of what you’ll be learning and whether it matches your personal goals. Lastly, talking with the professors and getting their insight into the program (and asking them questions to gauge their level of expertise) will let you know whether you’ll be actually learning what you really want to learn.

So, what’s the moral of the story? When looking for a school, always make sure to ask the right questions to the right people. It’s the only way to get the answers you actually want.