DADIU - How are you experience with it?

[Kastrup14]

Hi,

I am not studying a master yet, but I thought the goal as a student, studying Games, was to work with DADIU. However I have heard some rumours, and I was wondering how your experiences are with it?

Best regards
- Astrup

[Henrik LSP]

I am educated from DADIU. That was back in 2008 so it may have changed a bit since then. But I was very pleased with the education. If you want to get into the games industry I can highly recommend DADIU. Most importantly because it gives you practical experience working in a game development team. Experience that is hard to get otherwise.
Do you have more specific questions? What are the rumours?

[Zidora]

I was in one of the first classes graduating way back in 2006. My role was game designer. I was very happy with it, even if a lot of stuff was more unorganized back then and we were kind of the "guinea pigs" of the whole thing . I will definitely recommend! It was an invaluable experience with doing actual game development, both when things were fun and worked great, and when everything sucked (which it definitely will at times...) .

That being said, I wouldn't look at an education being "the goal" of studying games . I would look at an education as a means to become a better game developer, and in the case of Dadiu - getting experience with a big scale, practical project, working with other team members.

I of course don't know which rumours you've heard. I guess people's experience will always differ. I'm pretty sure the people arranging the dadiu courses are always interested in hearing critique and feedback, so hopefully the "rumour monger(s)" has been giving the feedback to the right people

I should probably mention that I have taught level design classes at dadiu the past couple of years, so I'm somewhat affiliated with the whole thing.

Hope you find out what's best for you to pursue . Dadiu is definitely not the only way to learning game development or becoming a game developer, but to me it was an important part of my education and I can only recommend it.

[Kastrup14]

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, and sorry for the late respond.

Just to make it clear, the reasonable rumours I have heard is:
- Only programmers gets picked.
- As a team consist of 8 programmers they might very well run out of work, not having anything to add to their portfolio.
- People priorities internship higher than DADIU

That being said, I am studying software(ie. programming) with a high interest in gameplay design (I guess that goes for most) so I guess I should be fine joining DADIU when the time comes. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, I am very excited to experience it

A fear of mine is being locked up on a project you don't believe will be succesfull. How did you back then decide on an idea?

Best regards
- Astrup

[Henrik LSP]

I don't have the information to disprove those rumours. But they do not seem like something you should be worried about.

Only programmers gets picked.

DADIU used to carefully mix teams to include different fields of expertise. I do not see why they would stop doing that. But it is quite likely that certain schools would have a disproportionately higher number of applicants, so that some are more likely to be rejected than others.

- As a team consist of 8 programmers they might very well run out of work, not having anything to add to their portfolio.

I have never worked on a video game production in which people ran out of work. There is always too much work. Never too little.
This seems like an unlikely scenario, but still - if those 8 programmers are incapable of finding solutions to the situation, they will probably be better off looking for work in a more predictable and stable industry than the game industry. Many companies (especially the small) need people who can do more than one thing. Sometimes called T-shaped employees. Often programmers do have to fiddle around with graphics, sound, design or project management.

People priorities internship higher than DADIU

Possible. I didn't experience team members who did not commit completely to the DADIU production. But others might have.