AUSTIN, Texas — Studied as a multibillion-dollar business, technology and as art, courses on video games are proliferating at universities grappling to keep up with a fast-evolving industry.
The University of Texas launched a gaming academy this fall with a nine-month certificate program where students conceive, design and program PC games, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The Denius-Sams Gaming Academy — marking UT’s first foray into video game studies — aims to mold industry leaders.
“Without effective leaders, the medium doesn’t grow, the business doesn’t grow,” said Warren Spector, a veteran of video game design who left the industry to launch the academy in Austin. He noted that there weren’t any programs teaching prospective game designers how to create a business model or direct a team.
About half of the inaugural class of 20 students come from design programs around the country. Each student has tuition waived and a $10,000 stipend, incentives that the program’s directors say help lure talented artists, designers and programmers.
“It’s kind of like the Navy SEALS,” Spector says in a YouTube video that describes the program. “We’re going to take 20 students — and no more. We’re going to give them a stipend, and we’re not going to charge tuition. We’re going to focus explicitly on the management, the production, side and the game direction/creative leadership side.”
The head of one of the world’s biggest video game developers, Paul Sams of Blizzard Entertainment Inc. contributed money to start the program and is a part-time instructor. The California-based developer has produced hugely popular games such as “World of Warcraft” and “Diablo.”
UT’s program represents just one point on a broadening spectrum of gaming in higher education. Other universities teach video games as art.
At New York University’s Game Center, students are taught to critique games like they would TV shows or albums, center director Frank Lantz said.
“You look at ‘Shadow of the Colossus,’ and it’s so obviously like a work, like a cultural work in the way that ‘Gone With the Wind’ is,” Lantz, a former game designer, told the newspaper. “There’s something deep and beautiful and amazing going on that’s like music and theater and poetry.”
Beyond graduating a new generation of gamers and developers, NYU’s program hopes to advance the field of video games by creating a platform for scholarship and technological and artistic breakthroughs.
