Admission into the Game Development program was fairly easy and pain free. For a fee of $95 I was required to submit a portfolio displaying anything game development, art or programming related. Like most college programs Grade 12 English and Math are required for admission but a healthy understanding of math and physics was a definite plus for my stay at Algonquin.

Tuition fees for the Game Development program are a bit steep for a college but are still reasonably under the $10,000 mark for a 3 year program. If you are smart with which books to buy, or in my case not to buy, you will save a few hundred dollars per year, as not every book I was told to buy were necessary.

“Strong emphasis is placed on developing the hands-on component which is offered through courses in game design and development, traditional and digital imaging, authoring, animation, and programming. Students also complete individual and team-based projects.” – Program Description

Unfortunately the big misconception people have when they read this is that they think they are getting themselves into a great video game program with a healthy dose of both art and programming. In reality this couldn’t be any further from the truth. What you will be getting yourself into is a program with roughly 60% programming classes and the remaining 40% of art and design. This was one of the reasons why we lost more than half of our classmates in the first year.

The program has since been reorganized but from what I’ve been hearing from later groups is that programming is still a major chunk.

This is a program where you will touch everything that is game development. You will do everything from life drawing, Photoshop, 3D, sound design, storyboarding, psychology, and ethics to math and programming in C++, C#, Java, DirectX, OpenGL and Actionscript. It’s a great thing if you don’t know exactly what part of the game industry you want to be a part of. The down side to this is that you will not be taught any aspect to the fullest to compete with more specialized graduates. The closest aspect where this may be an exception is programming, where a good portion of my classmates got programming jobs right out of college. This is compared to only one artist that was able to get a job a year after graduating (me).

Great introduction, but getting a more focused experience may be the optimal path.

We had a handful of great teachers and some not so great but my guess is that they’ve improved on this since I’ve been there. Since Ottawa is a software tech and not a video game sector, teachers that are snatched from the street are more software programming savvy and less experienced in the art of game design.

All that said, teachers are always reachable for extra help and actually care if you succeed or fail. They are very willing to learn more and keep up to date to deliver current information. The program is under new management and is continually being tweaked.

Classes are average. The building itself is great and meets the technology standards but Algonquin College has the least cubic space per student in all colleges in Ontario. This leads to having no lounges for the program and only a handful of labs with up to date computers. For our group this was not a problem because we only had about 20 students but for following group, which have 2 sections of closer to 40 students each, I can see this as being something that may cause lack of access to resources.

Unfortunately, this is where the program drops the ball in my opinion. Because of the dispersed taste in everything that is game development, like previously stated, you are not ready to jump into a specifically focused career. Jack of all trades are not what the real world are looking for, at least not in the gaming industry and especially not at entry level. The best thing to do is to get good at something on your own free time between classes or segue into another more specialized program afterwards.

When I attended the program in it's infancy there was little organization to create a cohesive sense of community other than team-based class projects. There were little to no guest speakers that came in to talk about the industry but there were a few teachers that had experience and were quite helpful in filling in whatever gaps were needed. As mentioned earlier there was no lounge for our program, let alone a specific dedicated lab for us to work after class so it was harder to come together, socialize and work on projects.