/digipen/ - DigiPenitentiary

>>3823

that's understandable, DigiPen is extremely specialized in what it does.

>>3797

>We live in an age where we can modify our bodies until we feel happy in them.

The methods are grossly inadequate. There's a reason Johns Hopkins doesn't do SRS anymore when they're the ones who began doing them in America in the first place. And what if when someone gets the reassignment surgery and they're unhappy at the results? Fuck em? Try again and hope things don't go worse like those people addicted to plastic surgery? The age when we can "modify our bodies until we feel happy in them" is still a long way away.

>>3797

>Everyone gets 'they' now, and any 'gender identity' gets laughed at.

What planet do you live on? Not even all of Tumblr is like this.

>>379>>3797

I'm waiting for the day that I have to use the "all-gender" bathroom because the mens bathroom is full and some transgender person tries to bitch me out. It's ALL-GENDER. Last I checked male was a subset of ALL. I have heard stories of people being bitched out, but I don't take shit from people who can't accept who they are.

>>3757

There's a certain person that is a GD, but is a terrible… TERRIBLE designer, but she gets internships. It's probably because she's a female and it's "cool" to hire women instead of a qualified applicant. She also screams about diversity all the time but will talk shit about Christianity and males. Sounds really hypocritical to me. Sad our society is at this point.

>>3817

The few times I have to poop at school (three in three years) I have to use that bathroom because I just can't do it in a more open public bathroom. It was the disableds when I started and I think it basically still is as this point.

Fuck anyone who bitches about it. I can't physically use the restroom in an unsecured location (it's sort of a "I can't pee if someone's watching" thing)

There's this strange obsession with "uplifting" the games industry into something enlightened hipster fucks can be proud of. It's not enough that anyone can make a game, you gotta socially engineer the consumer base because the existing gamers "don't deserve [their] hobby."

Games as a whole have to be something MORE than a fun distraction before they can "become art". You know, it's like how film can't be art because Adam Sandler keeps making movies.

Wait…

Sounds like a Bernie Sanders supporter.>>3808

Luckily, the industry is about to move past you gamergate types.

>>3820

It is?

Well, shit, where's it going?

I'm all for it considering you're working with a smaller team that can easily talk to everyone which in turn can easily make a fun game. Problem is that isn't a stable paycheck and so you're better off working for a company and working on your own shit on the side, within your contract+state conditions. Washington is nice since what you make isn't own by the company you work for if you use no piece of software provided by them and not done during company hours.

Alternatively, you might hit the jackpot and make millions. Almost all of those did do something different to stand out.

I would love to start my own indie company after graduation but I'll likely want to work for a couple years first to make a safety net in case it fails.

>>3626

B-b-but I used _shaders_

>>3621

>>3623

>Literally the only reason we ever heard of Hatred.

and blocklivesmatter

>>3810

tbh I thought the mechanic in BlockLivesMatter where each face of the block was a different weapon, and how you moved the block determined which direction you fired and which weapon you used was a cool mechanic

>>3798

go to this website

www.digipendropouts.com

>>3799

I fail to see how this is - OOOOOHHHHH

jesus christ I'm stupid

>>3800

its k

>>3802

for real though, is it any good? It seems decently priced

>>3806

If you can't handle the pen then it's a somewhat decent alternative

>>3116

They won't change anything about GAM, ever, because DigiPen likes GAM the way it is. It lets people who want to be super tryhard be super tryhard, and DigiPen loves to prop these kinds of people up as the gold standard of how teams should operate. DigiPen loves to put the games that these kinds of teams make up on the monitors and show them at PAX and stuff, because they're so flashy and cool-looking. If DigiPen wanted to improve itself at all, it would stop focusing on games like that, and work to improve things for everyone. Yes, you're always going to have incredibly smart people, people with prior programming skills, and so forth… so no matter how bad things are for everyone else, people are always gonna tryhard. But the tryhards shouldn't be the standard! Yet, at DigiPen, they are.

Again, even though I personally think the old Alpha Engine GAM 150 was better than the current version, it was obviously broken in several key ways (again, #ifdefs for Android support in the headers, despite everything else being broken). Yet, DigiPen has no incentive to improve Alpha Engine or the curriculum, because at the end of the day, no matter how poorly you teach something, some team is always going to have a super cool (compared to everyone else) game at the end. Ellinger and the other professors have no idea what it's actually like to go from learning C one semester to figuring out how to make a game engine, in your spare time, with nearly zero support from CS 230, the next semester.

The justifiably-cynical part of me says that they changed GAM 150 to use Zero only to improve the quality of GAM 150 games. People are dropping out sophomore year, Sem 3 and 4 (not counting summers)? No problem, let's just make it so the games that come out of Sem 2 are better, because after teams have already shipped their GAM 100 game, making another for GAM 150 should be relatively easy compared to writing an engine nearly from scratch in C. Sure, it'll make the jump from GAM 150 to GAM 200 harder, but anyone who struggles there was probably going to drop out anyways, right? :P

DigiPen should spend a lot of money (which, I know, they won'Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>3135

>Someone should make an infographic showing how much the curriculum changes year-to-year at DigiPen, compared to other degree programs at other schools. I think it would show just how little they know what they're doing.

Let's do it.

I'm a freshman though, sorry.

>>3150

Better yet, a changelog for each course.

>>3092

I've chatted with him a few times at parties. He acts pretty much the way he presents himself in this piece. If you're less experienced, he'll seem like an awesome guy teaching you all the secret stuff people like you haven't figured out yet. If you have enough experience though, you'll realize he's the dangerous sort of "teacher" that doesn't always know what he's talking about, but will gladly shit out opinions with such certainty that the less informed will mistake his conceit for wisdom.

>>3779

I feel bad for the people who're trying to get a BA in Game Design

The programmers can get work tons of places. The artists can get work anywhere that needs art if they're good enough. Game designers? They can get a job… designing games, I guess.

I feel like that market might already be over-saturated by other people who want to work for videogames.

>>3780

That's why the school is pushing the BAID program I feel. Trying to get some of them to look in other fields and such. AFAIK there aren't that many design jobs in general, but there are more out there if you look beyond games.

It doesn't help that all most of them ever talk about is wanting to join some large & popular company like Blizzard or Monolith. There's probably just as many (of the limited) positions being offered by smaller companies, and I've already seen a few cases of people ending up with minimum wage jobs just because they don't want to settle for a smaller company. Whether it's that or because those individuals are just bad designers, I can't be certain.

>>3783

Bit of both I imagine. There are a few BAGDs that are competent, but a staggering amount of them are still unable to grasp fundamental concepts of design.

The easiest way to weed out whether or not someone is worth their weight in a design capacity is to talk to them about things other than video games. If they're interested in, say, why a mug was made a certain way, or why the windows on the side of a car are the shape they are, then you've got someone fundamentally interested in the reason behind making anything.

All these kids that just wanna "make sick video games" are going to crash and burn regardless of degree program.

>>3780

>Game designers? They can get a job… designing games, I guess.

As a BAGD, that is what I want. I know it's not the most glamorous of jobs and I'll never make as much as I could as an RTIS, but if I wanted to work as a computer programmer, I would have stayed in my home state and gone to one of the colleges there. I could have gotten a better degree from one of the top engineering schools in the nation for less money and stress. I know people who did this, and maintained relatively normal social lives in the process.

Instead, I made a conscious realization that I wanted to make video games, even if its not professionally, but preferably if it was. A degree from DigiPen seemed like the best path forward with that.

>>3792

A fair decision, but I think you missed the point >>3780 was trying to make.

>I know it's not the most glamorous of jobs and I'll never make as much as…

It's not so much how much you make (most professional game designers make at least enough to live comfortably last I checked) or the prestige of it but rather the amount of job offers available to you. There's simply less out there for designers compared to programmers and computer graphics artists, even if you count the non-game industry positions. It's the reason why BAGDs have the hardest time getting a job after graduation compared to the other degree programs. I'm a BSGD myself, and I don't expect to be able to get a pure design job for quite a while (even though we take nearly identical design courses in amount and type). I'll probably be hired to do gameplay programming (things like software tools, AI, and engine subsystems), and failing that I plan on just going for a straight-up programming job somewhere; there's enough out there for me to find a few options once I look past games, especially since I have a lot of prior programming experience.

I'm not here to put you down; a BAGD is still more likely to get a proper career making games than not (at least since I last checked), but if things don't work out for whatever reason it's okay to look in places other than the big video game companies (something a fair number of BAGDs before you have been too prideful to accept). If you're a good designer with a heart for making games and a decent grasp on scripting & pre-built game engines, you should at the very least be able to make a decent indie title in your space time and be able to use that to get a leg-up on the other BAGDs competing for the same positions. But your game-designing job is not guaranteed and your competition is large (and growing), so be prepared to keeping working hard for your dream job, potentially even after you graduate.

>>3784

>>3785

>linguistics, history, and anthropology don't extensively use technology or mathematics

>they simply observe and record

Somebody doesn't know how work in those fields work.

>>3784

>>3785

Yeah, you two clearly don't know how genuine research in the social sciences is done. For a primer, here's a wikipedia article on The Scientific Method:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Social sciences all use this, as well as all parts of STEM. I don't know what makes you think otherwise, other than just plain not wanting to know.

>>3788

>Non-scientists talking about how to do science.

That's a rather strange assumption to come to. For all you know, I could have quit my unfulfilling job as a research associate in order to bring some joy into this world through video games. Or a historian looking to learn how to make games and other computer programs that can compile historical artifacts and knowledge.

>Cites Wikipedia on unrelated topic in an effort to substantiate his claim.

It's not unrelated. You specifically brought up the Scientific Method and misrepresented it.

As for it being Wikipedia, as I said, it's a primer. If you really want to know a more in depth, I can certainly recommend some books you could read on the subject.

>check top boards

>see this

>wonder what its about

So are you all those that attend this school? Or this is a particularly shitty school to shitpost about from afar?

>>3769

it's a great school imho, but it's hard, unforgiving, with a large amount of credits and specialized knowledge. you either git gud or fail out, and people from both demographics come here to shitpost and complain

>>3766

*groan*

>>3769

The majority of the regular posters are current students (including those from the Singapore and Bilbao campuses) , but you also have alumni, drop-outs, and incoming students posting here every so often. Staff/faculty members drop by as well, but chances are that they lurk more often than they post.

As far as the school itself, it depends on who you ask and what they're doing there, but to generalize it's more work and more project focused (solo & teams) than most colleges. Otherwise it's not too much better or worse. People usually stop by to complain first and shitpost later, so your mental picture of the school is going to be worse than reality if your only source of info on the school is this board.

>>3781

this is especially true when you consider this is really the only place you can shit-talk the school when you're feeling pissy. I'm glad I'm attending it, but you sure wouldn't be able to tell from some of the shit I post here.

You should have gotten a tissue for that. Your tears are gonna mess up your keyboard. The one you used to shitpost on 8chan instead of working on completing those soul-crushing deadlines you have.

Can confirm. School fucked up. We need to complain to IT.

>3666

nice trips

>>3733

>>3720

>AT

>>3721

>THE

>>3725

>ENRAGING

>>3726

>AND

>>3729

>EROTIC

The fuck is this?!

>>3697

Someone let Chris Comair have an autistic fit on the board again.

>>3628

any tips on where I should check for a non dorm living-space?

http://allenchou.net/2015/07/digipen-the-game-school-i-went-to/

As an outsider, most of the posts in this thread sound very shill worthy, like they came from a recruiter.

>>3668

Any in particular? Or just all of them in general? And why? Just curious.

It's probably like that because no one wants to be called out for whining. To be fair, all colleges have issues, so when you step back DigiPen isn't that bad even if it's problems might get to you sometimes.

>>3604 was my post here fyi (not posting from the same computer, because at school). I suppose I could shorten my point to something more geared towards for a first-time college goer (since I kinda forgot about the whole "just out of high-school" situation a lot of incoming students are in).

-Colleges give you degrees and a small amount of experience.

-Getting a degree takes work & effort. Period. For those used to high-school, this will suck until you get used to it.

-In general, compared to other colleges, DigiPen is a lot of work. This is a turn-off for many people who come here.

-DigiPen's strength are its projects, which get you valuable experience, connections, & something physical to show potential employers.

-Weird people, expenses, blah blah etc (welcome to college. Such things are the norm).

>>3673

It's probably everything said about RTIS is mostly positive overall. So naturally it does look like shilling, just like with any other service/product that you had a positive experience with. Meanwhile every other degree is filled with complaints overall.