A university level computer games development course?
How does that follow, wouldn't it be much more practical to do a general cs curriculum and then to specialize in visualization and/or interaction rather than something so narrow as games?
Your average top-tier game needs to do (just off the top of my head) -
- security
- database access (in real time)
- effective storage management, both in RAM and on disk, of gigabytes of data
- hard-deadline scheduling (every 60th or 30th of a second)
- some serious algorithmic work for physics simulations, rendering, AI and so forth
- networking
- asset management
- build systems
- scripting and customization
- user support, updates, in-game sales
... I could go on and on. Games span the entire stack of modern computing, from bare metal (worrying about how flash wear leveling works, or interrupt latency) to global-scale networking and how politics affects your ability to encrypt voice data.
Very little of which is actually taught well by a games curriculum. Most of them are following the "flavor of the month" build environment and platforms, which may be of little use when the student graduates, especially if they try to get a job at any of the more established game companies.
A good theoretical CS degree will teach the same concepts, but in a way that prepares the student to apply the concepts on any platform or language. That's why I think that it's better to get a generalized CS degree, and dabble with game development on the side. That's what I did in college, and it taught me that I didn't want to become a game dev.
I definitely do not recommend a "games curriculum" at any college I'm aware of.
A mix of good theoretical CS with some hands-on OS, database, compiler and data structures work is probably best. Graphics, naturally (though you can be successful at a games company without knowing much about graphics -- honest).
How does that follow, wouldn't it be much more practical to do a general cs curriculum and then to specialize in visualization and/or interaction rather than something so narrow as games?