Game education in Russia

    A few years ago, domestic education in the field of game design and game production was a rare beast. Education, say?

    Yes, in the West there is! University of Scotland Abertay Dundee launched courses for game developers back in 1996. DigiPen Canada provides a complete undergraduate game development education. In general, in the 2000s, the growth of the video game market had a positive impact on the development of educational institutions involved in training in game development abroad. The training is conducted on the basis of the German Game Academy, the Academy of Arts of San Francisco, the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt and many others.

    But what about Russia?
    Our game development education began to appear later than in Western countries. At the moment, finallyA number of courses and training programs for creating games of various levels have been formed. We have identified the largest and most significant.



    RealTime School


    One of the oldest private computer graphics schools in Moscow, which has been teaching artists, modelers and animators for the second decade. Game design courses appeared there in 2012. They are one-day intensives, involving 12 hours of classes on a day off. This format turned out to be the most useful for people who want to get a first idea about game design and the gaming industry. Courses help you understand what game development is and decide whether to try to get there to work or not to waste your time on games. A serious plus is the price: for a one-day course, the school asks about 12,000 rubles. And for residents from regions and neighboring countries, this format remains especially interesting. It’s worth noting that teachers of our program come to teach classes on game design and monetization of games at RealTime School "Management of online gaming projects . "

    Scream school


    Another training option for beginner game designers may be the private school Scream School. Its format involves a more in-depth and long-term training - 2 years of 3-4 lessons per week. Like RealTime, this school is largely focused on digital graphics and most of the courses and intensive courses are held here on this topic, and there is also a game design course with a deep bias towards programming. The cost of training is 600,000 rubles. Among the school teachers there are many employees of Mail.Ru.

    HSE School of Business Informatics


    In higher educational institutions of Moscow, educational programs for game design and game production did not exist until 2014. It was then that the first in Russia comprehensive training program for the gaming industry on the basis of the Higher School of Economics was launched. This is a professional retraining program " Management of online gaming projects”Aimed at providing students with systemic knowledge on creating games and gaining practical experience in developing their project. In 2015, the first ten students graduated, and in 2016, 30 students in two streams are trained on the program. In the process of study under the guidance of practitioners from gaming companies such as Rocket Jump, Wargaming, Gaijin Entertainment, Mail.Ru Group, 101XP, Fibrum, Life is Feudal and others, students create their own gaming projects from scratch, take them to a new level existing ones, or get employed in game companies (Rocket Jump, TrilobiteSoft, Mail.Ru, internships at Riot Games, work in VR companies and small indie studios). Training on the program takes place for 8 months on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Classes last for 3 hours. The cost of training is 180,000 rubles. According to the results, students defend graduation certification work and receive a diploma of the established form of the Higher School of Economics. There are also short weekly continuing education programs at the Higher School of Economics, in particular, suchgame monetization course .



    Other educational programs


    There are also several online game design courses. In particular, the course on the Universarium platform from the well-known company Wargaming attracted wide attention. This is the game design program : on the other side of the game . On Netologia, a number of educational programs on games were collected at once: “ Development of mobile games and applications for a product manager ” or a course on promoting mobile applications . Good online gaming analytics courses have been launched by devtodev.

    Game development courses also appear in Ukraine and Belarus. Russian publishers and developers are actively introducing education into the workflow. Someone pays for the training of their employees, someone invites experts to give lectures at the company's sites. Many large studios even develop their own direction of education within the company.

    There are still a number of game dev books. In particular, here are some books that can be read in Russian :
    Book title book author Book Link
    The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses Jesse shell Translation here
    Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design S. Rogers Translation here
    Designing virtual worlds Richard Bartle The translation is done on Habré
    Game Design and Architecture E. Rollings, D. Morris Translation here
    The first Russian game dev book: "Game Marketing" Sergey Galenkin galyonkin.com/book
    The second Russian game dev book: “Download money! Marketing of mobile games and applications » Anar Babaev, Nikolai Evdokimov, Mikhail Bode, Yuri Barbashov adtoapp.com/book/mobile-app-marketing


    Thus, education in the domestic gaming industry is actively developing and now everyone has the opportunity to choose a curriculum to their liking. In conclusion, I want to note that education is not a panacea that makes it easy to succeed in game dev. It only gives the person the correct knowledge and lays the vector for further development. What he will do with the knowledge gained - everyone decides for himself.

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