Hi Raffaele Our degree comprises of two streams. Half our students are from the Arts and half are Electronic Engineering. The engineering stream does a significant amount of programming while the Arts stream is only lightly exposed . What has been interesting and has been greatly encouraged is we have had Art students really take to it and progressed to being on a par with the engineering students programming wise. The reverse has also been true. We take great care to nurture these cross overs as we feel they are very important. In both case we have a lot of support for Technical side of either art or programming
We are the first University in South Africa that is doing full degree so as such we don’t have many local peers, but we are very involved with the local Gaming industry, Most of which has its ground in either Gamemaker or Unity. Since the free version of Unreal was announced there has been a perceptible shift in the number of people working in Unreal. Most of our work placement ties are based in the 3d Industry. This year is the first year any of our students will be at a graduation year, but we have done a lot of groundwork in building relationships. We also host an Annual Amaze Festival where we bring a whole lot of interesting internal Games people to Johannesburg. One of our students has already had interest shown in a board game developed for the course called After Robot (this is from their analogue phase when they start with the fundamentals) Kind regards Angus -- Angus Davidson ICT Project Leader - Digital Arts University of the Witwatersrand On 20 January 2015 at 6:47:40 PM, Raffaele Fragapane (raffsxsil...@googlemail.com<mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>) wrote: As someone who has little experience and no preference I can say much in any authoritative fashion. Two things I would consider though that have not been mentioned much: Do you have programming in the curriculum, maybe even in other degrees that eventually connect with the one you teach in? If so consider the C++ C# difference G mentioned. Do you plan to encourage and offer collateral support for your students that decide to go dip in the deep technical end? Same consideration, make sure they can be supported by someone with experience. Do you have particularly successful or fruitful work placement ties with companies or other unis? If you do what do they prefer? Which of the two is more marketable for the average profile you have created insofar for your students, or the profile you aim to create. Ultimately I don't believe the valuable lessons in game design will be so tightly coupled with the engine you choose that you will do damage either way, much like if you are an extremely good creative or TD you can shine even through an app you're not hugely familiar with and pick it up as you go. All that said, if in doubt to the point of a coin toss decision then look at post-degree consequences of the choice, whichever gives the more immediate edge in employment is likely preferable. Winning the junior employment race for a lot of people that aren't head and shoulders above the average is made of 1% edges. <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="width:100%;"> <tr> <td align="left" style="text-align:justify;"><font face="arial,sans-serif" size="1" color="#999999"><span style="font-size:11px;">This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. </span></font></td> </tr> </table>
