Shemeska
Adventurer
I'd be really interested in seeing what degree(s) most designers out there got before working in the RPG industry.
Most of the authors I've known or met never had a degree in any liberal arts field, but had degrees and jobs in other fields and wrote on the side to ensure they weren't starving artists, so to speak. If the writing got successful enough to support them by itself, they started doing that full time.
But just my advice, when you're in college, plan for a degree that you enjoy but that will give you access to a good job out of the gate, rather than something that's a relatively hard thing to break into, be it script writing or full-time game design. Of the people I've gamed with over the last five years, there's a big difference in lifestyle between the programmers/engineers/scientists, and the english majors. I don't mean to be mean, but especially in a tight economy, it's probably wiser to snag something more immediately applicable to landing a job right out of school.
Most of the authors I've known or met never had a degree in any liberal arts field, but had degrees and jobs in other fields and wrote on the side to ensure they weren't starving artists, so to speak. If the writing got successful enough to support them by itself, they started doing that full time.
But just my advice, when you're in college, plan for a degree that you enjoy but that will give you access to a good job out of the gate, rather than something that's a relatively hard thing to break into, be it script writing or full-time game design. Of the people I've gamed with over the last five years, there's a big difference in lifestyle between the programmers/engineers/scientists, and the english majors. I don't mean to be mean, but especially in a tight economy, it's probably wiser to snag something more immediately applicable to landing a job right out of school.