Information Technology

Game designers obviously focus on designing games. This is quite different in terms of the work vs. animators who usually work on movies or commercials. Whether it be game design or animation, there are many specific skills to learn and to concentrate in. You have the modeling of the characters (which is akin to digital sculpture), character animation, which requires good fine art skills and drawing of faces, environmental design, which is essentially designing the background for the characters, texturing (for skin and fur), lighting, rigging (to get the character to move correctly) and more.
I guess the bottom line is that:
1. You need to decide whether you want the programming side or the design side.
2. If design, majoring in either game design or animation would probably be just as good for developing the above-mentioned design skills. However, if you want character animation or environmental design, it is crucial that you develop your drawing and illustration skills particularly of characters. Other aspects of animation don't need this as much.
3Ds Max
3Ds Max offers better interoperability with other Autodesk products.
Many prefer 3Ds Max for materials and rendering due to the ease of materials setup.
Getting the most out of 3Ds Max can require some scripting using MaxScript.