adfpaintballer

Hey,

I'm a freshman here at ucla trying to figure out what I want to major in. It seems like every week I keep considering a different career I'd like to go into when I graduate. Well when I was little I wanted to work with video games. Like a developer or even a programmer, but not a tester.

Well I'm considering it again. Thing is, I hate math. I HATE math...so I don't know if programming is for me. I just know that I'd be happy working for a video game company. Game development and marketing seems like the most interesting to me...I'd like to plan out such things as levels, missions, weapons, items, characters, stories, ect. Or I'd like to help sell the product...help with commercials, box art, taglines, screenshots, ect.

That being said, would any of you happen to recommend a major to prepare me for this? Or at least a few classes that I could take/sit in on to see if I'm REALLY interested in this? Or perhaps just direct me towards the people I should be talking to? Thanks!

hewhothrows

Hmmm, hard to be a programmer if you hate math. But i have a friend who is really interested in videogame design, and he's a design/ Media arts major. They have classes where they work with 3d design (Maya? I dunno.)

check out some of the classes, and try to find some DMA majors and talk to them:

DMA . Education . Undergraduate Classes

MadeInChina

where's flopsy

flopsy

I recommend majoring in CS/CSE/EECE. You need to know CS 111 material for low-level programming and the vector/matrix material from Math 33A is everywhere in the engine. Higher-level stuff, like marketing, design and scripting don't require a specific major; most of the game programmers I worked with got their B.S. in Computer Science but the designers and scripters came in with North Campus degrees and/or worked their way up from QA. Helping to sell the product is a tougher one; I don't know what the qualifications for game marketing are.

adfpaintballer

Yea..thanks all. I'm not really looking into actually working on the technical side of the game. I don't want to be writing script or developing a new game engine; like I said, I dislike math too much to be doing something like that.

I'd like to stick with a north campus degree to be totally honest. One that would still help me get into the industry as a designer/marketer or somebody who just makes sure the game/product comes out on time.

Jinobi

Heh. I came into UCLA as a CS major, hoping to eventually work on game design. Instead, I turned into a Psychobiology guy.

hewhothrows

oh, btw, I was a game tester during the summer, and that ish is roughhhh. But I kno youre not into that. good choice.

mdcissp

I don't know if you want to consider transferring to USC Viterbi Engineering where they have a premier program in video game design and related minors. It is one of the few such undergraduate programs in the U.S.

SFV2008

Major in Marketing/PR

hewhothrows

theres no marketing major