I think a few universities are slowly moving towards game development (and design) courses, but really, they have consistently been behind the times. I learnt on the job, by using an 8-bit micro back in the day, and more recently from downloading things like XNA - and then following the video tutorials. I would still suggest this route - C# is a very good language for beginners who want some real power at their fingertips. I write all my tools in it. You can also write games for PC and XBOX 360 with it.
Sadly most university programming courses (I've attended 2, but perhaps can't speak for all of them) tend to be run by doddering mathematicians, interested in programming and logic for their own sake. You won't learn how to quickly put a sprite on screen, but you will be forced to learn useless languages and concepts. You will probably be asked to learn C++ (which isn't useless, but is complex, more popular than it deserves and will hopefully soon die out as a dev language). Logic languages, how to construct flowcharts - so much of what these courses teach was a revelation in the 1960s and 70s - but feels antiquated now. I would check your course teaches a C language, 3D and perhaps some modern development platforms like Java. You should also sit down and make sure you understand binary and hex. About a day of reading and you'll be covered forever.
Writing games is a craft - not an art, and not really a science. You need to learn the various skills bit by bit so you can woodwork a decent table. If you want to go the mobile game route, download Java and start by making a sprite move around on screen. There are a lot of online tutorials for this. Or if you want to go the (slightly more) hardcore route, download XNA (.Net, C#, Visual Studio free edition) and get used to the two main things you need to make games - an understanding of a C based language, and familiarity with Visual Studio. This is a big package, but by a very long way the best programming environment available at the moment. If for some reason you have an Apple machine, then you will have to learn X-Code, and for Java development, a lot of people are happy with Eclipse.
XNA and C# have a ton of tutorials on the web, and you might be surprised by how quickly you pick it up. Google is your friend. Some are video tutorials, which are especially brilliant. Wish I had those when I was starting out.
I apologise if some of this is obvious to you but I don't know your skill level and want to try and cover all the bases.
To get a job in the conventional console based games industry (or PC) you will probably need a Computer Science course, a good grounding in C or C++ and some fairly basic understanding of geometry. That said, a bit of skill with C#, some examples of your work and a lot of enthusiasm, and they may take you on anyway. Programmers are in short supply and many are taken on without degrees. You can learn on the job providing you have the basics.
Step 1 - download XNA. Step 2 - Make a sprite move on screen. Get used to x and y coordinates. Step 3- make many sprites move, for instance a starfield. Right there you have the beginnings of being a game coder - and sadly a great many university Comp Sci courses won't even teach you that much.
Caveat - I am a Generation C games developer - an old man by the standards of the industry. Maybe games courses, especially in the US, have begun to catch up with the industry. Perhaps Java and the (terrible) Objective C are where the money is and you should ignore Visual Studio or Sony development - but the same basic principles apply to games coding no matter the platform. You have 17 milliseconds to process the player's input, draw his new position, draw the baddies, draw the world, draw the backdrops, calculate the collisions, calculate the interactions, play sounds, stream and play the next bit of music and reset everything ready for the next frame. (if like me, you prefer your games to run at 60fps)
If you can learn to do this on platform A using language 3, then you can do it on platform B using language 9.
I hope this gives you some pointers. Whether they went to university or not, most games programmers are self-taught to a large degree. I would also suggest you simply go to a games studio and say "hi! I'd like to learn about games development - can I do some work experience or testing here for a week or two?" They might well encourage you to learn some code, or bring you in as cheap testing muscle for their current game. Getting paid probably won't figure highly in their priorities but you never know. If they say yes, and especially smaller studios will often say yes - bingo, you have a foot in the door.
Cheers,
Robin Jubber
CTO, Futurlab,
writing from London, England, February 2012.
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