Game Designing

I'm not sure if this thread actually belongs here. Please move it to the appropriate place if I were wrong.

So... I've been thinking of what to do after I graduate from Senior High. I've been considering to choose Game Design/Game Development as my university major. I'm confused of where, and which university would be best for this. And I'm still not sure if the career prospect is actually lucrative.

I'd like to have your opinion on these things:
1. What is the difference of Game Design and Game Development?
(I've always thought that Game Design is more into the art and concept and Game Development is more into programming and coding, but I think there are more differences than only that.)
2. Which one do you think has better career prospects?
3. What are the best universities in the world (and please mention the country and website too, if available) for that major?

Thank you very much for your help. I'm sorry for being gone for so long... and suddenly came back with these questions.

Well Game Design would be more of the story, the art, the animation.
Development would be programming the whole shebang
I think both prospects are looking good, but I really haven't looked at the outlook.
And I have no clue on the best colleges. Some that I know of is Houghton College in NY, USA and a few small ones. Houghton is a christian college though

Have you heard about DigiPen? Is that place good enough?

Game Design is the process of the idea
Game Development is the making of the idea

typically both are taught hand in hand to students.

As far as "lucrative" is concerned, you should first concern yourself with what you want to do, not what gets you the most money.

For schools: use the internet, there's even sites to find colleges for you.

JAP! I thought you were dead. :_;

lol. Oh, btw, do good colleges in game design/developing look for people who've taken certain tech courses? Or would a good math/science grade suffice? ;-; I've wanted to have an option for this kind of thing open, too, but I've not had many opportunities to squeeze such a thing into my schedule.

I don't mean to hi-jack the thread in any way here. P:

I believe good math grades would suffice. I am holding a 90 in Calc. so..hopefully...
However, if you wanna start, I would honestly look for a programming language you like and start with it. Good experience for later

Most people don't get to choose their sub-specialty in larger companies. For example, a person with an interest in 3d modeling might spend a whole project only texturing, or only making background models. Schools generally take a jack-of-all-trades view by teaching a bit of everything, and then leaving it up to you to specialize. Unfortunately, game production is still young as far as schooling goes. If you like programming, you could do that, and also have a much wider pool of jobs to pick from than just gaming.

@ NAMKCOR: Well it's true that I can look up in the internet -- but I think testimonies would be more trustworthy than the advertising they put up in brochures and pamphlets.

@ BOE: haha life got me offline T_T

@ Moo: It's okay, your questions are relevant to what I'm researching on anyway.

@ Redyugi: Hmm... I'm actually more interested in the art side... Like designing world, characters, stuff like that. Does that mean I will need to take art courses, or even take art-related major?

@ Holk: I'm not sure, cause almost everyone in my school are taking programming. It's just too competitive. How about Multimedia Communication Design? I heard in Singapore, they must take that major before they advance to Game Design.

Well I would take something like Visual Communications. Its a class we have here that teaches people how to design logos and other things using a graphic program. Art classes would help also. Start learning how to do textures and models and stuff like that.

Hello, Im currently at University doing "Computer Science" however this campus is heavily geared towards Games, I currently live in a flat with 2 games designers, a games programmer and a games concept designer.

The games designers this year have been doing all manner of things from 3D modeling to Map Design to Design Documents.

The games programmer has been on pretty much the same course as me, learning programming and maths.

The games concept designer has been sleeping, modeling and drawing but pretty much just sleeping.

My uni also offers Games Design and Programming which is a mix of the two.

Try some modeling and mapping aswell as some programming and you'll easily see which you like best. They have equal career prospects as far as im concerned.

@ Redyugi: Okay. Thank you for your help. I'll take that into my considerations.

@ Ahref: What is the name of your uni?

Staffordshire - Midlands, UK: http://www.staffs.ac.uk

Most people don't get to choose their sub-specialty in larger companies. For example, a person with an interest in 3d modeling might spend a whole project only texturing, or only making background models. Schools generally take a jack-of-all-trades view by teaching a bit of everything, and then leaving it up to you to specialize. Unfortunately, game production is still young as far as schooling goes. If you like programming, you could do that, and also have a much wider pool of jobs to pick from than just gaming.

This is true.

It'll depend on your skill level overall.

Also, Multimedia Communication Design is just graphic design via television commercials and radio. That's a lot of what I do.

Most people don't get to choose their sub-specialty in larger companies. For example, a person with an interest in 3d modeling might spend a whole project only texturing, or only making background models. Schools generally take a jack-of-all-trades view by teaching a bit of everything, and then leaving it up to you to specialize. Unfortunately, game production is still young as far as schooling goes. If you like programming, you could do that, and also have a much wider pool of jobs to pick from than just gaming.

technically this works both ways as you learn a hella lot of programming in game development majors, and will have skills necessary to program (arguably simpler) applications like office shit and networking stuff.

It's pretty general all around when it comes to comp-sci and programming.