Japanese Game Schools: Two Points Of View?
Earlier this week, sister GSW site GameCareerGuide.com posted a second story about life at a Japanese game school, as written by Andrea Rubenstein, who "...had two recent goals in life: to become a fluent Japanese speaker and to find a game development school that would accept her somewhere in Japan."
The first GCG story on the subject tackled her successful attempts to get into HAL, and this new one discusses day to day life at the Osaka-based game academy.
In any case, the piece itself is pretty darn interesting in terms of educating about what goes on at one of these Japanese game schools - it seems pretty different to many North American game courses, at least. But even more interesting is a comment on the Gamasutra story precis from an anonymous game industry professional.
Sure, it's cutting stuff, especially given the advantage of anonymity, but it seems to have some relevant information in it, and it's nice to see behind the scenes intel from Japanese publishers - here's the full post:
"Japanese game schools are notorious for turning out useless otakus who wouldn't "cut it" in conventional colleges or trade schools. There have been numerous exposés on game schools in the 90's that lambaste these game schools as nothing more than profit centers for their proprietors.
Hopefully, the situation has changed since then, but I seriously doubt it.
When I worked at a major Japanese publisher (ironically, at one of the companies responsible for producing a game mentioned by Rubenstein in part I of her article), we basically found ourselves almost automatically rejecting game school graduates because we found that the skills taught in those schools were wholly inadequate for our needs. We prioritized our recruiting process on candidates with degrees from traditional colleges and electronics/computer trade schools.
Unlike Western game companies that tend to hire only experienced developers, our company's internal process was to invest in the time necessary to educate our new recruits in our work flow and development culture through what essentially is an apprenticeship system. In addition to seasoned vets, we basically hired people with zero game development experience. The last thing we needed was a newly minted game school graduate who was taught based on a specific curriculum that didn't fit our needs.
Our new recruits would require at least 2 years before they became full-fledged members in a production team. During that "probationary period" of sorts, our experienced production staff (company "lifers" with ~5+ years of experience) would teach, mentor, and monitor the new employees to determine their natural skill sets and eventually placed the employee based on their ability to perform at the best of their abilities.
For example, if we discovered that someone with a computer science degree was brilliant at game design, we would encourage the individual to become a game designer. If that designer eventually demonstrated strong leadership skills, we would eventually promote that employee to become either a director or producer. There was a colleague of mine who went through that exact career path.
As another example, I also worked with a music director with a degree in music who also wound up programming part-time in our internal middleware team since he enjoyed programming.
In short, our approach to game development was based on the principle that making games is an art, and not necessarily a vocation. We fostered diversity in our ranks through a recruiting system that placed a higher priority on the natural aptitudes of a prospective recruit instead of someone with a cookie-cutter game school educational background.
I'm morbidly interested in future installments from Rubenstein, especially articles discussing her attempts at finding employment at a major publisher/developer, especially in Osaka."
Comments
Though I disagree with the fact game development is an art not a vocation (my view is the exact opposite), the anonymous poster has a point. The few game school candidates I've seen, interviewed or worked with displayed no greater skill or understanding than your average applicant. Their portfolios, on the art side, would make it seem the schools were offering only basic art lessons, including still-life drawing and some, /some/, digital art works but nothing specifically aimed at game development.
Personally I still think an education can only give you a (very important) foundation of understanding, whereas the actual skills you use day by day can only really be learned "on the job", as it were. I was planning to write a post on the subject myself, which I might do sooner now, rather than later.
Posted by: JC Barnett | July 3, 2008 6:01 PM
What anon describes is pretty much the employment situation for any Japanese company. If you go into contemporary Japanese society is what is causing a lot of problems.
Aka: the name of your university matters so much more in Japan then in America. Trade schools are basically for people that have some major social or academic problems/can't do standardized tests/ obsessive compulsive interests that made them not do well in high school. in Japan you work hard in high school to get into a good college where you don't really have to work that hard, just party/work on your social skills. Then employees select you based on the university you went to. Once you enter the company that's when you get taught what you will need in life.
Basically your life in Japan is almost all but determined by one big standardized test. This worked well when life-time employment and company loyalty was of utmost importance... Now, not so much.
Posted by: Chuck | July 3, 2008 8:21 PM
Having people that are passionate about something and really want to get a job doing it is something present in most industries. Naturally, they'll go to a school that offers a program for what they're interested in. And, also not surprisingly, not everyone will be fantastic at what they do. I think the fact that this problem (present in much bigger and more established markets) is appearing in the gaming industry is saying something about how much it has grown over the years.
Posted by: GotGame.com | July 7, 2008 11:58 AM
I've mentioned some of this in my articles and on my blog, but I figure that it can't hurt to say it here too. :)
I can't speak for other schools, but I can say that HAL isn't trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Most of their graduates find employment of some sort, but there are two things that have been emphasized to us over and over again: a lot of graduates get employed in non-game related tech fields and if making money is our goal we should switch to another focus.
There also seems to be a lot of emphasis on helping us to beef up our resume so as to be more appealing to companies. By the time I graduate I'll have various certification exams, an internship under my belt, and a portfolio that I work my ass off to make (which will hopefully not be crap).
If nothing else, at the end of the four years I'll know a lot more about how to make games than I did. Heck, I've already learned more about C programming in the two months+ that I've been here than I did in first year Comp Sci in my university. Not to mention that studying databases has helped me learn better ways to structure the SQL I use for my plugins and websites.
Anyway, for anyone who'll be in the Osaka area on September 23, my school is hosting their annual HAL-MODE FESTIVAL, where graduating students display their portfolios. You need tickets to get in, but the school will give me as many as I need so if you're interested in going drop me a line via my blog. I also intend to cover the event for the October issue of Cerise magazine, so for those of you who can't make it but wish you could be sure to check it out.
Posted by: tekanji | July 10, 2008 7:57 AM