What should I expect to run into when going into a degree for game development?

Hi Calvin! My suggestion to you is to start right now. Do not wait for college or some other life milestone. By starting right now, you will learn for yourself what kinds of things you will face. If you have no experience, a nice way to start would be by visiting https://unity3d.com/ and downloading Unity. Take some time to download some tutorial projects from the sight and watch all of the tutorial videos. Watch the coding videos on Unity's site. Watch the live training videos. It will be a bit difficult as you first start off. Start going to game design meetups or other industry events in your area. Participate in game jams. Get involved in the indie community. As Ed mentioned, there are a lot of different disciplines involved. By downloading a game engine like Unity and watching tutorials to get familiar with game design, you will immerse yourself in the process and very quickly start to understand what is involved in creating a game. I would definitely recommend just starting and doing it before you jump off to some school. you may find that it's not at all what you thought it was going to be. Good luck!

When I started there weren't any game development degrees, so we had to pick and choose the things we thought we'd need to learn on our own to be able to do the job. Now there are a lot of places offering degrees. They are very different from each other. Are you looking to do art, programming, level design, or something else wishing the game industry. The classes you take may be very different depending on your goals. Some schools will have you take an overview of all of the disciplines, not such a bad idea, so you'll know what it's like when you're complaining about the artist not doing it the way you wanted, you'll know how hard their job is. Not to pass the buck, but this is a very good question for you to ask the schools you are considering attending. Find out what they do, and see if it makes sense to you.