"We've got schools that teach anything from truck driving to flight attending ... so why not videogames?" asks Andrew Sturgeon, developer of the brand-new Electronic Gaming Technology program at the Eastern Business Computer Institute. The EBCI program intends to teach would-be Quake programmers the tools of the trade. And it's not the only one. A slew of new programs are letting students bypass full CS degrees and head straight toward those in-demand gaming jobs.
Open up the back of Next Generation and you'll find a slew of ads from tiny institutes offering training in everything from animation to 3-D graphics and engineering. But only a handful of colleges are focusing solely on game programming, including DigiPen in Vancouver, the Laboratory for Recreational Computing at the University of North Texas, and now EBCI.
Ten-year-old EBCI, in New Brunswick, Canada, expects that 25 people will start out in the first class, and although the program was just announced this week, it already has 70 inquiries. The Electronic Gaming Technology program will cover everything from physics and calculus to artificial intelligence and Direct3D, and will offer a two-year degree similar to that of an American community college. In producing the curriculum, the EBCI staff consulted with game developers and industry insiders, some of whom will show up as guest lecturers. The object of the course is to have a portfolio of at least three games by graduation to show potential employers.
EBCI isn't the first to go after potential game developers. The 9-year old DigiPen, for example, offers a two-year program in game programming primarily for consoles, and has an established six-year relationship with Nintendo, provides technology and computers for student training. About 200 students are currently going through DigiPen's course, and it's just added a Redmond, Washington-based program exclusively for "real-time interactive simulation."
DigiPen didn't start as a college, but as part of a game development company. "We started teaching because we reached a point where we couldn't find any more people to work on our projects," explains Jason Chu, DigiPen's registrar. "It's logical for more schools to teach this technology - it's a big industry."
As part of the computer science program at the University of North Texas, the Laboratory for Recreational Computing also offers a focused curriculum in gaming training, which has received grants from major companies as well as guest lecturers from the industry. Rather than making a focused degree, however, program director Ian Parberry sees the benefits of a full CS Degree.
"Places like DigiPen will find themselves more and more teaching what is pretty close to a CS curriculum - programming, computer architecture, AI, graphics, data structures," says Parberry. "I think that a classical CS department does a better job of teaching that material, so it's probably easier for the student to learn (and cheaper) by taking a CS degree at a university that also offers game programming."
But so far, directors of programs like DigiPen and LARC say there has been industry enthusiasm about their students, and graduates have consistently gone on to great jobs. As gaming industry recruiter Sean Lord of Interactive Development explains, there's dearth of specialized talent. Most computer science majors, or graduates of multimedia programs like those at San Francisco State University, get what he calls a "renaissance" education - a little of everything, but nothing that really focuses on the cutting-edge game developer technologies. As such, these specialized schools are filling a hole.
"Is there a demand for qualified recent grads in this field? Absolutely," says Lord. "It all depends on the relevance of the curriculum - and the code DigiPen does with Nintendo was definitely relevant."
Course developers agree that keeping on top of the break-neck pace of development technologies is difficult. The EBCI and LARC both keep programs smaller and flexible to make sure that they can change curriculum as fast as the developing industry. "The biggest challenge is that the course changes radically every year to keep up with moving technology," says Parberry. "Close behind is the challenge of convincing my colleagues that games is an academically viable subject."
And surprisingly, many of the applicants aren't simply high school grads, but already have computer science degrees and have gone back to get specialized training in game development. About 50 percent of DigiPen's students already have BA degrees in computer science - one even has a PhD.
But in the end, getting hired all comes down to what a paper diploma doesn't necessarily give you. Says spokesman Kirk Green of Interplay: "We look for people with experience and talent - there's so many places you can get a degree, we don't look at them over anyone else anymore."
