Colin

Your not testing GT5... your testing why car #248 can pass though collision object #1,214 when driving in reverse with the handbrake on... Why the game crashes when the back left tire hits a traffic cone... Why when you hold Circle, Triangle, L1, R3 and scroll up on the track selection screen the camera starts to spin...

Game testing isn't about playing a game... it's about breaking a bug ridden peace of crap until your eyeballs bleed...

I have heard good things about Full Sail and at one point I was planing to go there, but the fact that I'm Canadian and the Vancouver Film School wasn't in Florida won over, and I think I ended up better for it.

If your near RIT take a tour, 90% of schools will be more than happy to have a admissions person take you for a tour around the campus. Go with your gut, if it's in a dungeon somewhere with only two classrooms then it's probably not the best place to go.

In the end remember that any program that you go into is going to have people who flunk out and people who graduate but don't really care. The important part is to get to know the people who do care about what they do and where they go in life. You'll improve your chances of surviving greatly if you do that.

As a person who went through a course similar to this and has worked in both the game industry as well as film I can say that 90% of those courses are totally worthless. Most programmers and designers have computer science degrees, and most of the artists either went to a full on art college or just made a demo reel on their own. I ended up going to the Vancouver Film School, and while being one of the most well known schools for getting into the industry the fact still remains that a good 30% of the people through the course will never find work and will have wasted $30-$50 grand and about 40% more will have to go back to their home country and find work doing graphic design or something else.

This isn't to say that you can't make it from one of those courses, but be weary, that community college that is offering that game design degree is probably in it for the cash grab.

This is a bad example of a selling a kit and claiming it as DIY when it really is just "some assembly required"... It's the difference between making an Ikea shelf and cutting the lumber for one yourself.

I made something very similar about 3 years ago. It cost me about $200 in total for everything (LCD, Lenses and Lamp). I cut the case, made the brackets, striped the LCD and measured everything out so it all was in alignment and it was a great experience and I had a ton of fun making it.

I'm guessing you aren't the kind of people who built models cars or airplanes when you were kids.

It's the same type of thing.

America doh!

It's the same reason Need for Speed dosn't have any people. The car manufactures don't want people getting hit with their cars. They are very overprotective with their products.

It looks great but honestly I'm getting really tired of war shooters.

Where's another Bioshock?

Until another like it comes along I guess this and others will have to do.

Wicko, It may not exactly be GTA in terms of open world exploration but I still think it's going to be a incredible game. Super Mario is the poster boy of linear gameplay but that dosn't stop people from running time trails and enjoying the game years and years down the road.

I think most of us have been spoiled by open-world gameplay, we forget that while yes you can build a city and let you do anything you want in it and it will be fun but it's not the answer to everything.

Assassins Creed had a great big open world that allowed you to complete your missions however you wanted, but it was cursed with bad mission design that left it repetitive even though you could go anywhere.

Linear can be great if the design supports and extends that type of play, and I think that while yes it's not huge detours around the level that take you around on many different paths it's still going to allow for enough replay value and variation.

It may be $25 million in sales but it sure isn't $25 million in profit. Even if the Wii's sales die down to nothing Nintendo will still more than likely turn the greatest profit from this gen.

Writers don't come cheep by any means, and hiring a team of writers could cause you to have to boot some Modelers or Animators. You can expect to spend about $40,000 a year per writer, and on a multi-year title this will really add up. Hence the problem, do you spend your money or Writers or Animators?, because unless your a studio with a bunch of AAA titles under your belt your probably not going to be able to afford to many from either group.