Anyone with any information/experience with Qantm Courses? (Video Games University, more or less)

[The Stig]

So I was shown this by a friend who wants to get into the video games industry as a designer tester programmer person I suppose (in general).

For those curious:

Qantm College Global Homepage (US/World homepage)
Qantm College London, UK (UK)

It's basically a college/university dedicated to the games industry side of things, so you get stuff such as 3D Programming, Game Design/Programming, Audio, Web Design.

I've looked at the prices, Game Design + Development costs £11900 (roughly $18000 for the year), which includes a Dell XPS m1730 laptop from what I can pick out in the brochure. Not sure of the specs, but it is "essential" that you have one so you can use it to do the course (perhaps it contains the business type GPUs, i.e. Nvidia Quadros, and maybe/probably to beta test/play the latest games).

So you're forced to pay for a laptop even if you already have one.

But anyways, anyone currently on/know someone that's on/been on courses from Qantm? I'm curious to know if it will help that much, although I am aware it is down to the individual in the end, but wanted a general overview/feedback of the company and its courses in general.

Plus, the price quoted is for a diploma, not a degree.



EDIT: Just a surprise, I know it's not been long but in a video games forum with quite a few people here being programmers and no one responding I now begin to doubt this "university" or the name attached to it.

[Guyverarmor]

Try thishttp://www.fullsail.edu

This one has been mentioned in a couple of game informers as far as gamer university or college goes.

Honestly , I have not heard of the one you have mentioned above.

[Darus Grey]

Try thishttp://www.fullsail.edu

This one has been mentioned in a couple of game informers as far as gamer university or college goes.

Honestly , I have not heard of the one you have mentioned above.

Fullsail blows, and is outrageously expensive for a sub-par education, worst year I ever spent of my youth.

There was an out post about the same thing, look for that, cause I'm too lazy to retype my fullsail rant, since unlike others I actually made the mistake of going there.

[MisterBob]

So I was shown this by a friend who wants to get into the video games industry as a designer tester programmer person I suppose (in general).

Your friend might want to do some research as to what jobs actually exist in the gaming industry, which ones are reasonable goals to shoot for, and what skills are required to get those jobs. From that quote alone, it is clear that he has no clue.

[zoobernut]

Your friend might want to do some research as to what jobs actually exist in the gaming industry, which ones are reasonable goals to shoot for, and what skills are required to get those jobs. From that quote alone, it is clear that he has no clue.

This is the absolute truth. If he wants to be a QA tester he does not need to go to school or anything. It is a very entry level job and most of my friends in school had this job while they were still in school.

If he wants to be a programmer that is one course of action with a set of skills that need to be worked on while game designer is a completely different path with completely different skill sets, and artist is yet another path with yet another set of skills.

He needs to research it and figure out exactly what he wants to do.

Edit: I would not recommend FullSail for games. It is ok for animation but I have not seen good feedback about that school in general. Some very good schools are Gnomon and Digipen. I personally attended an Art Institute and while there is room for improvement I learned a lot and all of my teachers had many years of experience in the game industry both at large companies and owning their own game companies.

Also the laptop thing is kind of suspect to me. Any good college worth their weight should have enough computer labs that you do not need to include a laptop as a required item. Granted you want a good computer to have at home so you can work at home but I knew many people who went to school for programming and game design that worked just at school in the computer labs.

[The Stig]

I see, well I appreciate the responses. Nice to know.

Also, zoobernut, I totally agree with your statement about the laptops. Initially he showed me the pic with the students with all the XPS. My first response was, and I don't usually use anything outside of "lol" : rofl

I assumed the laptops were lab laptops, but even then that's overkill. Then I read that you're highly encouraged, or more or less you're required, to accept into the laptop program.

Why "rofl"? As zoobernut pointed out, I too agree that any institution worth their weight should not force a high end laptop on students. Infact, apart from the "professional" GPU, such as Quadro FX (not sure what the ATI equivalent is, if they have one), I'm very very sure you can do without one. And as far as I know it, if modelling/3D stuff/compiling/rendering is main priority, the current Dell XPS m1730s do NOT have quad core processors (which are good for this stuff - your mileage may vary), unless Dell has some sort of deal with them.

I'll speak to him more later on if he gets serious, for now I don't think we're approaching that level yet.

[Sol-Blackguy]

You can get a multi-media degree that covers game programming for much cheaper. The VG business is already overcrowded, so you'll wind up with a degree that's worthless in the end.

[Aerin]

Digipen is another option if you're looking at schools in the U.S. I haven't heard of Qantm.

Some people on BG go to Digipen, myself included, and I think we all agree it's definitely worth it if you can make it. Any of the degrees are tough to get into and even more difficult to stay in and finish. If you do manage however it looks very good.

[Darus Grey]

Digipen is considered the harvard/yale/etc of video game centric schools, they're about the only one worth anything.

Edit: Just looked up requirements cause I was curious...they finally started accepting GEDs...that was the stupidest policy ever 11 years ago when I first applied, I went to full-sail because I *couldn't* go to Digipen because of that policy, my life would be a lot different now if that hadn't happened.

[zoobernut]

The computers in the computer labs in my school all had the nvidia quadro fx cards in them that retail for about $2k each at the time plus the xenon workstation processors that were either dual core or quad core. Those computers were amazing and cost more than I could ever afford to build. I used them a lot while I was at school but when I went home my computer worked fine for simple modeling and animation and stuff. It just sucked for running multiple programs and rendering animations.

I think the hardest time I had was when I was doing motion graphics because I liked to have adobe photoshop open at the same time as After Effects and that rapidly killed my computer. Other than that the most intense moments was when I was texturing and had maya, photoshop, and bodypaint open at the same time.