The demand for video game developers has led many top US universities to offer specialisations in the subject.

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GAME TIME: Developing and testing computer games can be a lucrative career

.The Thukrals wanted their son, Dhruv, to go into nanotechnology. So when he told them he would rather be a video game developer, he might as well have said he wanted to join the circus.

“Are you serious?” they asked.

He was. The 21-year-old graduate student at the University of Southern California (USC) proved it by switching the focus of his computer science doctorate from a field known as distributed systems to video game programming.

He then launched a campaign to convince his parents back home in New Delhi that helping people have fun was not only a legitimate career but also lucrative. He peppered them with articles about the growth of the video game industry, which is expected to generate global revenue of nearly $50 billion this year. He also sent them stock charts and annual reports of some of the industry’s top companies.

They relented.
“Awareness is growing, and more students are interested,” said Thukral, who in 2004 became one of the inaugural students in USC’s graduate programme for video-game development. “Computer science can be fun.”

Game design has helped rekindle interest in computer science and become a hot new major at more than 200 schools. Because making games crosses several disciplines, the diversity of programmes that offer such courses is staggering: fine arts colleges, engineering schools, film schools, music schools and even drama programmes are sending graduates into the industry.

“Some programmes throw a drama guy together with a programming guy to see what they come up with,” said Bing Gordon, a venture capitalist and former chief creative officer for industry powerhouse Electronic Arts (EA) Inc. “Games is the ultimate interdisciplinary art.”

When video games began to emerge in the late 1970s and early ’80s, their creators tended to be computer hobbyists working out of bedrooms and garages.

Now, game companies recruit armies to work in studios all over the world. They invent characters, write dialogue, compose music, create digital scenes and write the software that rules these fantasy worlds. A blockbuster game can require more than 100 developers, each working for two or more years, to complete.

“Just like everything else, universities are about following the money,” said Jessie Schell, who teaches game design at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center in Pittsburgh.

Colleges really began to take notice about six years ago, when the game industry’s sales started to rival movie box-office receipts, Schell said. Since then, he said, there’s been a “great boom” in the number of programmes cropping up to train future developers.

One of them is Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, California. Founded in 1999 to teach computer graphics and sound design for the movie industry, the school decided to create a separate course for video-game designers last year after seeing so many of its graduates jump into the profession.

The surge in interest has led schools to add games to their menu — but not always to the benefit of its students. Recruiters say they often see “mills” that run around-the-clock sessions to churn out as many students as possible. Other programmes teach specific skills but not how games are pulled together.

“It’s a very hot academic growth area,” said Colleen McCreary, who runs EA’s university relations programme. “I’m very worried about the number of community colleges and for-profit institutions, as well as four-year programmes, that are using game design as a lure for students who are not going to be prepared for the real entry-level positions that the game industry wants.”

About one-third of Carnegie Mellon’s graduates go directly to work at EA, said Cindy Nicola, the company’s vice-president of talent acquisition. The Redwood City, California, company soaks up close to 300 graduates each year from various universities. “You’ve got kids in school who wake up saying, ‘I want to be a game developer when I grow up’,” Nicola said. “That’s pretty exciting.”

One of them is Paul Bellezza, 26, who says he thinks of games “as the new dominant form of entertainment”. He was so desperate to enrol in the USC School of Cinema programme that he showed up uninvited to many of its events. After months of schmoozing, he got in.

There, Bellezza teamed with another student, Matt Korba, to produce a title called The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, a metaphysical puzzle game that combines the creepy but cute aesthetics of illustrator Edward Gorey with the look of silent film.

Bellezza and Korba graduated from the masters programme in May and formed their own game company, Odd Gentlemen Co., in Los Angeles. “This is my dream job,” Bellezza said.

Working in the business isn’t always a bed of roses, particularly for the entry-level game testers. Bellezza did that for a year before enroling at USC.

“Imagine having to play a video game that’s not as good as the ones you get to play at home,” said David S.J. Hodgson, co-author of the book Video Game Careers. “None of the textures are in, so everything looks blocky and your characters are doing weird things. Each time they do that, you have to write it down so the developers can fix it.

The average annual salary last year for game developers — which includes all workers in the industry — was $73,600, not including bonuses and stock options that can add several thousand, according to a 2007 survey by Game Developer magazine.

Gordon, the former chief creative officer of EA, had this message for other students: “We’re starved for talent. So hurry up and graduate.”

Sources: Los Angeles Times and washington post

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