Game development

[Forum]

Is it worth it signing up to learn it at school? Theres also flash game design too. I'd like to make a multiplayer game like meiun and have friends play :D.

[ARTgames]

Are you really interested in game development?

[Scotty]

If it's your first class, Flash might be nice, but I wouldn't invest much into exclusively using Flash for games.  HTML5 and canvas are gonna virtually wipe out Flash over time.  The class might be good for learning the basics, but don't tie yourself to it.

[Forum]

Are you really interested in game development?

I am interested, yes

[CherryPie]

Is it worth it signing up to learn it at school? Theres also flash game design too. I'd like to make a multiplayer game like meiun and have friends play :D.

only if you are willing to spend a lot of your personal freetime on research. The stuff you'll learn at school will never teach you more than the basics.
I'd suggest, you start learning object oriented programming on your own and write a few apps for windows (it is really easy to start with visual studio express and it's free also). If you are more experienced you can start with gaming frameworks like XNA(you will find a lot of user friendly tuts on the web).

why on your own? If you are talented you will get bored pretty fast in school, in that wasted time you could accomplish a lot more on your own. All the famous devs (including Bill Gates, John Carmack & Mark Zuckerberg) all relied on self-taught knowledge when they created their first products.  ;)

[Scotty]

Is it worth it signing up to learn it at school? Theres also flash game design too. I'd like to make a multiplayer game like meiun and have friends play :D.

only if you are willing to spend a lot of your personal freetime on research. The stuff you'll learn at school will never teach you more than the basics.
I'd suggest, you start learning object oriented programming on your own and write a few apps for windows (it is really easy to start with visual studio express and it's free also). If you are more experienced you can start with gaming frameworks like XNA(you will find a lot of user friendly tuts on the web).

why on your own? If you are talented you will get bored pretty fast in school, in that wasted time you could accomplish a lot more on your own. All the famous devs (including Bill Gates, John Carmack & Mark Zuckerberg) all relied on self-taught knowledge when they created their first products.  ;)

If a developer has absolutely no knowledge of programming, then I would highly recommend a basic course to get them kick-started on things like OO programming.  Past the basics, everything one will develop will rely on self-taught knowledge, so in his case, I would recommend taking the class (assuming he has no prior knowledge of programming constructs).  Past that class though, unless another is aimed at teaching you a different language, don't waste your time if your end goal is to apply what you've learned to develop games.

[Meiun]

If you are serious about learning to program, I definitely recommend taking some classes at least at some point along the line. I do agree that if you are going to get anywhere too far you need to be able to be self reliant in many ways, but learning everything including the basics on your own is a breeding ground for learning bad habits and poor coding practices. Many of the fundamental concepts can be fairly difficult to wrap your head around for someone who is totally new to them, so having someone to make sure you take off in the right direction is certainly a plus. Especially when it comes to your foundations, there are also really some poor ways to do things and good ways to do things. Learning the difference can end up being pretty important down the road.

Now, how good your classes are at teaching you these things at a highschool or lower level is another question completely. Some highschool level programming courses I've seen are definitely not taught by anyone who knows much about what they are doing themselves, so that might be something worth checking out as well haha. Assuming you do get some teachers who know what they are doing though, I definitely would not say that taking further classes beyond the basics is a waste of time... Coming from someone with a degree in Computer Science, there are a lot of advanced programming concepts out there that many developers simple don't get properly exposed to without a real strong mentor to help guide you in the right direction. You will need to be self motivated to succeed at them, but having a good teacher to help you out can be very beneficial.

Another tip is to start from the ground up. If you want to make games, don't just dive straight towards the game part without learning the basics of what you need to do it properly first. While it may be exciting to try and get something game related running as soon as possible, it will likely come back to bite you if you don't take the time to really understand everything that you are putting into your program.

[Forum]

I thought i wasn't going to be able to sign up. But i got a glimmer of hope when i met a guy who was helping in game development and said he was working on an mmo. I'ma try to switch a study hall in for it :D.