If you don't want to wait for the power of their GPU servers, check out a recent project I did with NVIDIA for ray tracing realistic illumination on today's desktops:

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/

From the abstract, "Image Space Photon Mapping (ISPM) rasterizes a light-space bounce map of emitted photons surviving initial-bounce Russian roulette sampling on a GPU. It then traces photons conventionally on the CPU. Traditional photon mapping estimates final radiance by gathering photons from a k-d tree. ISPM instead scatters indirect illumination by rasterizing an array of photon volumes. Each volume bounds a filter kernel based on the a priori probability density of each photon path. These two steps exploit the fact that initial path segments from point lights and final ones into a pinhole camera each have a common center of projection. An optional step uses joint bilateral upsampling of irradiance to reduce the fill requirements of rasterizing photon volumes. ISPM preserves the accurate and physically-based nature of photon mapping, supports arbitrary BSDFs, and captures both high- and low-frequency illumination effects such as caustics and diffuse color interreflection. "

Absolutely! I use svn in all of my courses now (with the command line, not a GUI) and it works great. Some bonuses:

1. Teacher can see whether students are working on projects, with a log of who did what, when. This is great for resolving extension requests and for grading group projects.
2. Teacher can help students with their bugs from home at 2am, rather than having to come into lab to see their code.
3. Students can move files between operating systems
4. Use revision control as a way of submitting projects electronically, with timestamps
5. Easy permission and group control allows making projects available, but read-only after deadline
6. Put reports in HTML or Latex right in with the code and data

-m

I wrote a very long to response to this question: check out the new book, Creating Games: Mechanics, Content and Technology http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/creatinggames.

The short answer is that a game programmer typically has years of experience in C++ and a working knowledge of computer graphics, AI, and physical simulation. There are many kinds of game programmers. Tools programmers create level editors, internal compilers, and other art and music tools that are used to make the game itself. Engine programmers work on the libraries that are shared between games. Gameplay programmers write the actual game, using the tools and engine. There are of course many jobs within a game company besides programmer. The least understood outside the industry are the designers, who are typically not programmers, are the ones who create the mechanics and storyline for a game. That is, if you are a programmer you will have some input into what the game is about and how it works, but your influence over that will be very small compared to a full-time designer. So perhaps you want to be a designer and not a programmer!

The best way to get a job in the games industry is to walk into an interview with experience on a game project. This could be a from another company, a mod, or a class project. You should also have a good understanding of the games that are currently out and arguments about why they are good or bad. A typical interview question might be, "how would you implement the ocean waves seen in World of Warcraft", or "how would you make a board game that captures the essence of what makes Red Faction entertaining?"

-m