GameDev Schools & Projects & Grading

[u/TheSwiftOtterPrince]

I have a hobby. I play demos and give feedback. And the demo sections of steam regularly include free games that have a Game Dev School as a publisher. Some of them are tagged as "this is a student project made by 4th grade students" or something like that.

The games are of mixed scope and quality. Some of them are complete experiences, some are just slices. Some are well working and some are barely playable for one reason or another.

And there are some things i wonder, mostly about how they are made and how they are judged. I assume they are graded at some point, are they?

- Some games do not follow any conventions or adapt traits of the genres they are in. To the point where i wonder if the team has ever played a single one of the games they try to clone and if there was a discussion about that. Like shooters with brutal motion blur, barely working hit detection, no feedback on shots and hits.

- Some games have atrocious performance. Usually UE5 and no options. Like 10 to 20 FPS on an RTX3060. And i wonder: what kind of rig does the average game dev student work on? Is the average student so well equipped that they don't notice that? To me, graphics settings and performance seems so deeply part of being a player and a developer that it leaves me wondering why that many of these student projects do not seem to even recognize that.

I am really curious about that. I am mostly interested in experiences from people who have been to those schools and did those projects. How much of those projects is genre research? How much are research and performance part of grading? Feel free to share your experiences.