Apparently the "video game college is bad" take is going around. My experience with video game college was.....

- got an honors graduate degree in 4.25 years
- hella expensive
- learned a ton
- worked on some pretty cool student games with some cool people

here's a very condensed list of how I career laddered after that

- founder / lead designer on an indie project with classmates
- got ISTQB cert based on recruiter advice from GDC
- contract QA position from GDC referral
- cold apply to a full time job
- referral from GDC meeting

outside of that first one, pretty much everything on that list was not directly connected to school. Ultimately I don't know how much influence being a college graduate or my student projects had in my career pathing

I do see value in my degree. I learned a lot at school and got to work on a bunch of cool things. I think it's really easy to look at resources on the internet or the "networking" buzzword and think that replaces a game dev college education....

did I learn a lot on my own? Sure. Have I learned a metric fuckton working on the largest game in the world. Absolutely! Would I be where I am today without game dev college. No I really don't think so.

I still spend a lot of time working with my Alma Mater. I've done Q+A and guest lectures with students there. I don't shit all over kids who actively want to attend game dev school. Everything I've tweeted out in this thread are the things I bring up when I talk to these students

It's real easy to look back and say "I dId It WiThOuT sChOoL" but I don't know that. I'll never know that. I have found value in my college degree and my college experience. I've also gained value and created value on my own.

It's not always black and white.