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Education Entertainment Games

Universities Step Up Videogame Studies 41

Posted by simoniker from the learning-and-fragging dept.
Thanks to Wired News for their article discussing the continuing rise of academic programs related to videogames, covering the University Of Southern California, who are "...planning to offer a minor degree in the topic in the fall of 2004... it is believed to be the first major research university to do so." The article also notes that, previously, "gaming programs were limited to more-specialized schools such as DigiPen in the Seattle area and art schools like the Art Institute of California in San Francisco, which offers a degree in game art and design. NYU and the University of Washington have certificate programs in video games, and others, like MIT, wrap gaming into media studies programs."
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Universities Step Up Videogame Studies More

Universities Step Up Videogame Studies

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  • Guildhall. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Harbinger(JDW) ( 119020 ) on Thursday November 13, 2003 @04:33PM (#7467557) Homepage Journal
    Sorely lacking from the schools mentioned in this article is the Guildhall at SMU [smu.edu]. Not only is it backed by a major university, but it is also not in a particular faculty which means that the teachers can teach the specialized curriculum and not have to go to classes that are simply CS or Art classes poorly adapted to creating games. Add to that the fact that the numerous game companies in the Dallas area are very supportive and often have people drop by to give lectures, and you have one great potential for a school. It isn't all hype either, the people in the game industry really are participating and giving lectures to the students. I should know, since I am among the first group of students currently in the program.

  • for those in canada (Score:2, Insightful)

    by schapman ( 703722 )

    I recently finished my studies at A.I.C.D.I.S. Artschool [artschool.com] in burnaby, bc, canada. They were recently bought by the arts institute, which in a way is a good thing. After graduating, you have access to the whole AI job board, and from what I've been told, they are decently good at finding job placements for people. I studied game programming there and learned a lot about programming and game design that I would not have learned elsewhere. They have some excellent instructors there (my programming instructor i

  • The industry doesn't want this. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13, 2003 @05:04PM (#7468011)
    I can't see any possible way that those in the industry still sane would want to encourage these types of degrees. The industry is already so saturated that it's easy to imagine lots of disapointment and people not using their degrees. Is this the new film school stereotype?

    For an artist, skills with traditional media (paper drawing, clay modeling) are more important than knowing how to use a certain 3D package.

    For a programmer, generic computer skills and adaptability are more important than being able to use specific hardware.

    By the time the above have obtained their degree the industry will have completely changed and the skills they have will be obsolete. Not to mention the possible avoidance of advanced topics that would be covered in a standard art or computer science degree. For example: Will these kids be scared of assembler?

    For management? Why.. a business degree would be more applicable.
    • Will these kids be scared of assembler? AHH assembler :P actually, in my program, we learned assembler as the first step to writing shaders. After we spent some time on it though, we switched to HLSL. According to the instructors, the only time anyone in the game industry uses assembly now is after the game is mostly written, and certain parts need to be optimized. also, according to them, the only people who write assembler now, are the poeple who have been doing it for a long time. we are getting to th
    • By the time the above have obtained their degree the industry will have completely changed and the skills they have will be obsolete. Not to mention the possible avoidance of advanced topics that would be covered in a standard art or computer science degree. For example: Will these kids be scared of assembler?

      People in a general CS program are scared of assembler.

      Game programming is one of the few areas left where you're likely to drop down to assembly. If anything, I'd expect someone from a gaming schoo
      • Well, there are exceptions to the 'scared of assembler' rule. It does vary by the individual program though.

        The school I went to put me through two types of assembly, because it was a 'general' CS program, not in spite of that fact. The program had a very academic(as opposed to 'practical' slant). The requirement were structured for a combination of breadth, and understanding underlying concepts. Thus, assembly itself was a subject(typically x86), and there was a hardware course on microcontrollers.

    • Re:The industry doesn't want this. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      as an artist and student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and a member of the first class here to take the newly introduced Game Art & Design major, i'd like to say that they do indeed put a major influence on traditional media, and we do everything from paper drawing and clay modeling as well as learn multiple 3D packages throughout our major.
    • The university thought process:

      1. See media/politics/economics/etc. generating demand in a particular field, create course to absorb demand.

      2. Profit.

      3. Goto 1.

      Note that this is analogous to the usual /. joke, but doesn't include the ??? step. Uni's don't leave anything to chance...

      Q.

  • Sociology, folkdancing and now this. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It boggles the mind. They're not even pretending to educate any more. It's right out in the open.

    I'm sure we all recognize the kind of student this will attract: Those unbathed, ill-groomed term-room troglodytes we knew in college, who gave out the terminal room phone number as their own and slowly, lumpishly flunked out.

    Some of them stayed on anyway, parasitizing an institution that was no longer willing to tolerate their presence.

    Now I guess we won't be flunking them out any more, we'll be giving
  • I hear a lot about people going to universities with video game degrees. I don't hear much about how the video game industry in general views these degrees. Do they respect them? Does Nintendo or EA say, "Oh, I see you have a degree in game design, and another in game theory. You're just the person we're looking for!"

    I realize that these game-centric courses are relatively new, but shouldn't we be hearing some success stories from them? Someone must have gotten a degree from Full Sail by now.
    • I hear a lot about people going to universities with video game degrees. I don't hear much about how the video game industry in general views these degrees. Do they respect them?

      No, not really. Which you're not going to hear from anyone employed by/who's been through one of these places, but it's the truth.

      The modern games industry is structured around two basic concepts - a continual cycle of cheap and keen labour ("I write games" sounds a lot sexier than "I submit databases queries to a machine I've
    • No, we don't respect them.

      A couple of years ago a colleague did some part-time teaching at a local video game school. He didn't do it again because it was ridiculous. The stuff they were teaching was outdated, and way too specific.

      For instance, they spent many weeks learning about fixed-point math. Now, it has been a long time since most of us have relied on using fixed-point numbers instead of floats for speed. Sometimes they are still used for compression, but they are always converted to floating-

    • There are actual benefits to these kinds of degrees. In particular the students who attend Full Sail get a strong foundation in software engineering as well as some of the most important aspects of game development that nobody will ever tell you like...not to expect everyone to bow down to the great designer that you are right out of school. The students that come out are humble and hardworking and quick a number of them take jobs right away.

      For examples, check these links:

      http://www.tsbgames.com/

      http://
  • We may not offer it as a major, but we do certainly offer a very successful class [gatech.edu] in video game design, alongside other classes [gatech.edu] that go along with it, such as digital video special effects [gatech.edu] (who make some very impressive movies [gatech.edu]), computer graphics [gatech.edu], and more AI classes than you can shake a stick at.

    Plus, the video game class has successfully sent at least one group to the IDGA conference every semester it's been taught, which is pretty impressive, seeing as it's one class amoung several and only has about 30
  • 1) Go to a 4-year state school, and get a degree in something that ends with "Engineer". Become an Oracle DBA, learn some java, sql, vb, and asp. Get some experience applying these tools in an industry with high cash flow (banks, energy companies, pharma, etc.) 2) Profit!!! 3) Screw around with video games on your 42" flat-panel TV while sitting on your new red leather couch. Bourgeois isn't bad!
  • The Software Engineering [rit.edu] department at RIT [rit.edu] has an application domain [rit.edu] (like a concentration w/in your degree) for Computer Game programming. I believe this concentrates much more on the programmming aspect of game programming, though... I don't think they get very much into the artisitic realm of this.
  • I'd like some sort of psychology class to be a part of a video game curriculum. The idea being that the students that are drawn to video games because they had very deprived childhoods get a chance to become aware of that.

    If someone had noticed what a sad state my upbringing had left me in when I was off at college, I might not have wasted 15 years of my adult life hating myself and escaping into books and video games to try and manage my depression and loneliness.

    The lost opportunity for a real childhoo
  • Michigan State University has a few classes in the Computer Science and Telecommunications departments which have game programming as a part of the class. In fact, there's one TC class which is dedicated entirely to game design. They are going to be having a graduate school curriculum similar to Guildhall in the near future.

    Additionally, MSU has Spartasoft, [msu.edu] which had 2 finalists out of the 10 games selected for the GDC Student Showcase in 2003.

  • Other schools offer this as well (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The University of Hull (in England) offers a Master's Program [mscgames.com] as well as an undergrad program: Computer Science with Games Development [hull.ac.uk]. The University of Abertay Dundee also offers a Computer Games Programming course both as a Master's [abertay.ac.uk] and as Bachelor's [abertay.ac.uk]
  • Most of these comments seem to be about people wondering whether or not a degree in Game Whatever will get them a job. Since when has college become a place that is supposed to provide you with job training?

    College used to be a place of higher education where people went to learn, to gain perspective, etc.

    Games are becoming an important social force in our world, so they are being studied. The proliferation of courses and programs does not indicate that more people want to WORK in video games, it means
    • This is very true. I'm a freshman undergrad wanting to get in the game industry, specifically in design; the main problem I face in my own preferred subject of learning is that game design is not included in any art curriculum, and it is not explictly interconnected with programming, either. Both art and programming are processes to implement a design, but they aren't themselves the design, just as a movie script isn't the product of acting or directing talent.

      So what I've pretty much decided on doing for
  • In Europe you'll find a Center for Computer Games Research [game.itu.dk] at the IT University of Copenhagen [www.itu.dk].

    They do not offer any specialized educational programmes, but students from the regular programmes can do projects with them. Their angle is quite humanistic. They tend to look more at the sociological aspect of games.
  • I practically majored in Quake in college, with concentrations in rocket jumping and speed running.

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