Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Best path to become a game designer

So I'll be 23 in July and haven't really gotten anywhere in life post school since I was doing things I wasn't fully committed to. I have now decided that I'm going to focus on landing my dream job which is that of game designer and I'm looking for advice from people in the know on the best way to achieve that goal.

I've been reading around and the general consensus appears to be that I should get myself a computer science degree though I wasn't unable to find any recent threads discussing this.

From there I apply to be a game programmer and build up my portfolio then go into design.

Is this still the better path or are the game design degrees now valued higher? I find a lot of the game design courses offer placement years within the industry and then successful placements can result in a job offer being made before the course is complete. Would I get similar opportunities in computer science? There are also other degrees like software engineering and I'm not sure what my best option is.

Also I did not study an IT related course at A level. I find myself with 3 options in that regard, there are universities like East London that will take me on anyway, there are others where I can do a foundation course and then get into the undergraduate course and then there are the unis whereby the only means of entry is having the required subjects and grades at A level in which case I would need to go back and do that.

How important is the university and which one of these paths would be the most likely to land me the job I want?

Many thanks for reading and I look forward to any and all advice.