Thinking of switching out of architecture. What major is good to help me develop apps for phones? Especially gaming apps.

you made your first topic about making phone games 2 days ago. you have zero experience in the subject, but you suddenly wanna switch your whole career to it? sounds like a bad move imo. go make your first app. if you still like it, then switch majors.

as for your question. you need to learn how to program first to build your foundation. you'll need to write a lot of programs that aren't games to build those skills. then you'll need to learn some physics, AI, and graphics depending on what games you wanna make. look for a school that has a focus on mobile / games. a generic computer science degree won't be all that beneficial.



if that info is real, and you already have a degree, i'd recommend not going to school for another bachelors. you'll need to take around 30 classes for a bachelors, but only 3-5 are actually useful. you can do self learning and accomplish much more in 4 years

This post was edited by carteblanche on Jul 4 2013 08:34pm

On a side note, if OP has the money to send someone to college to get a bachelors in game design, I would certainly help you with developing your games.

-
I run/founded Geeky Gents, a game design company

Get a degree in Game Design so you can be basically unemployable that'll be a good idea.

Go for game programming, not game design

Or get a real computer science degree so when you realize that working 80+ hours a week for some sweatshop game development house for peanuts isn't for you then you can get a real job that won't try to kill you with overwork and no reward.

This post was edited by rockonkenshin on Jul 5 2013 07:12am

You need to know lots of math and physics to write games. You won't learn that in computer science. And game programmers don't make peanuts. The average wage is $70,000 under 5 years experience in Canada. On top of that, he probably doesn't even want to work for a game development company. He clearly wants to be an indie developer.

Haha, what? Physics maybe (my school required all students to take 2 semesters of hard science like Physics) and math is most definitely covered. What kind of shit CS program are you thinking of that doesn't have a rigorous math track?



Do some research on the average amount of hours they work. $70k over a 60-80 hour work work starts to average out to peanuts when looked at hourly. Those kind of work weeks are not uncommon.



Then why would he bother with a degree at all? If he was driven to be an indie he will get more out of it by self-learning and doing.

This post was edited by rockonkenshin on Jul 5 2013 10:21am

the STL college system (washu, rolla, umsl, etc), AFAIK, require calc 1 and calc 2, discrete math, linear algebra (elementary), stats and (technically a CS course) algorithms


edit: for typical CS bachelors that is

This post was edited by Eep on Jul 5 2013 04:28pm

Stats required for every bachelor's degree. Easiest class ever.
Calculate also easy when you learn the guy who invented it was going at the same pace as you're learning it.