/digipen/ - DigiPenitentiary

>I attended ProjectFUN two years in a row for game programming back in 2007/2008 (it might've been 2006/2007). Since then, DigiPen has been my life goal. I've wanted nothing more than to attend here.
>Then I got here, and I've slowly come to realize that DigiPen is not the amazing school I thought it was.
>I'm a BSCSGD student. The GD program feels like a paying for an early access game on Steam, except the game is your education.
>The GAM professors keep raising their standards every year by adding new rubric requirements, to the point where I think they've forgotten that GAM200 is a class wherein students make their first real, full game engine from scratch, without being taught how to make a game engine. If it works at all, that should be an incredible achievement. It's not; you'll get like a 60% for that.
>The GAM professors also like to show favoritism towards "the good teams" and it makes lesser teams feel bad. This kind of thing should not happen.
>Chris Comair taught my CS225 class and it was a joke. He had a crappy midterm that he said was "because he was jet-lagged." Then he got replaced by Volper. I can't believe Chris Comair still works at the school after his performance. If he was not the president's son, he would've surely been fired immediately.
>Did I mention that we're never taught how to make game engines? At a school where that's the whole point? Instead we just have to figure it out on our own?
>Every BAGD wants to be a BSGD, and every BSGD wants to be RTIS. This is just silly.
>BOTTOM LINE: If I hadn't attended DigiPen and instead had convinced four of my friends and myself to not go to college, instead just take some community college introductory-to-moderate CS courses (CS120, CS170, CS180, CS280), and in the meantime, we work full-time on teaching ourselves the skills necessary to make a video game, and then make a video game, it would be the same thing if not way better, and instead of paying the exorbitant DigiPen tuition fee, you'd only have to pay your own rent and living expenses. Aside from the fact that Mead is a fantastic CS professors and this school does not deserve him, I would be much, much happier and equally, if not more productive making games with a team on my own. Sure, I wouldn't get a degree at the end of it, but if we shipped a game every year or so like you do at DigiPen, the portfolio and code samples we would produce should be more than enough to get hired at a game company.

glad to finally get that off my chest and direct it back at the school.

>>237
Wait what? WHAT? Elaborate!

>>237
I couldn't believe it when I heard this from one of those chosen teams last year. Leave it to Digipen to have a suspicious open secret like this instead of letting everyone know.

>>241
It's exactly like I said. Some Junior (and maybe Senior, I can't remember) teams were chosen by staff because it looked like they had potential to make a very polished game, and they were told that if they made a website, development blog and some other shit to make their game look good for the school or whatever (the rules were INCREDIBLY vague) they would get two cheques of $250 USD for each person, one at the beginning and one at the end. I don't remember how many teams were picked, but I think it was around eight to ten. It was "suggested" the teams not to talk about the deal to other teams. It was also said that the teams would later receive instructions on the kind of website and presentation materials they would need to make. However, instructions never came and the staff didn't provide any more details, so in the end they weren't required to do the website or any of the stuff, and nobody knew what was happening, but they still received the cheques and that was the end of that. Basically nobody knew what was happening or really understood why they were getting the money.

>>227
You can just fill it out without logging in, lawl.

>>258
I was told that Subray were turning in how many hours they put into the game and got checks monthly. Though who knows how true that is, but I wouldn't doubt it. It encourages them to work harder and makes digipen look better.

>>306
and then this year apparently their game is shit garbage so far

>>307
Their game was shit last year too. Apparently it would crash on exit and was a fuck ton of shitty code for the final submission. But it was pretty, let's ignore the facts.

>>307
This just in, creating one good looking game doesn't guarantee someone is the best game developer ever

>>307
They were paid $500 total per team member theoretically to make advertising material for DigiPen, but the guidelines were so vague that they got paid for doing nothing.

Their actual game so far this year seems to be a vague-ass procedurally generated poetic experience type thing or something. Ellinger's going to eat that shit up.