2D artist Becca Hallstedt talked about the responsibilities of game art schools.
Game Art education is a hard topic to discuss. It’s expensive to study and getting a job in this field is incredibly challenging. So should you actually take this chance? Should you devote your time to it? Take a huge student’s loan and feel that pressure for the next couple of years. Is it worth it? What if you fail? Becca Hallstedt published her thoughts about it on Twitter.
Game art college programs need to be honest with AAA quality work and be transparent with students about the dedication of time and practice it takes to get there.
Game art college programs need to stop passing students in fear that flunking, being honest with students will cause them to leave: a loss of income for the school. A wallet walked away. Game art college programs are failing their students by not doing exactly what the students are paying TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars for: to learn how to make professional level game art.
American for-profit schools are exactly what they’re called, and they’re failing to evolve. Failing to provide a modern education in a constantly, quickly changing field. Passing a class is a message: “you have done the work that you need to. You have reached the expected, required level of quality.” Passing students that have not done that is blatant lying. It is taking advantage of young adults. Of parents trying a new career. Of dreamers.
We as a development community desperately need to have a conversation about the *hundreds* of college programs pumping underprepared, heavily-in-debt, passionate, miseducated creators into the world. An open one. It is *entirely and genuinely* okay for students to study games and have other goals than AAA/realistic art/etc but holy shit, if you’re going to vacuum $20k or $70k or $120k out of a 19-year-old, help them have skills to make a living so they can eat. Jesus Christ.
Game art college programs are not working and we need to talk about it.