On the third floor of the Merrill Engineering Building, there is a room that is set up unlike the other rooms. Similar to the hallways of art connoisseurs, the room’s walls are covered with images. These illustrations are not copies of Degas’ classic depictions of ballerinas or representations of da Vinci’s greatest works. These decorations are Mario Bros. posters, Zelda stickers and pictures of other famous video game characters.
This is the Entertainment Arts and Engineering Department. This unique room is not just about video game artwork — it is about the creation of video games. Sitting at the room’s computers, students are not only appreciating or playing games, but making them.
“The reason why we are the number one game design school in the country is because of our interdisciplinary approach,” program manager Corrinne Lewis said. “We mimic the game industry by having artists and engineers and, at the graduate level, producers working together all the time. So the industry people who come in and want to hire our students are so impressed with them because they’ve already had a couple years of experience.”
The program for undergraduates is an overlay of the computer science degree and the film and media arts degree. It has students making video games starting at day one. The computer science students are focused on the coding and programming side of game development, while the artists are focused on design and animation. In addition, both sides learn how to communicate with each other and how to create a better synergy between the different minds of the video game development.
The program also offers a master’s degree, which began in 2010. The graduate program pushes students to the production side of video games. The program combines engineering and arts as well as the business side of the industry. Students seeking a master’s degree also get the opportunity to spend two semesters working on their own master level video game projects.
“Students who are in the middle of their master’s project right now are doing two games. One is a music-oriented game, which is very fun. And the other is called ‘Cyber Heist’ and is a cooperative game with someone who plays a thief and someone who plays a hacker … They’re breaking into the department of education to get rid of everybody’s student loans,” Lewis said. “The game itself is really interesting because the hacker is on an iPad and the thief is on a computer, and so they sit together and have to talk.”
The undergraduate program was started in 2007 as a partnership between a professor from the computer engineering department and a professor from the arts department. After seeing what other colleges in the country were doing with video games, the professors recognized the U’s need for such a department. Since the opening of the program, several students have landed game development jobs in the game industry with some of the world’s leading game designers.
“We give everyone all of the tools they need if they want to work in the game industry,” Lewis said. “One of the easiest ways to get a job in the games industry is to make games [and] have games you can show … We do that at both the undergrad and grad levels.”
For anyone interested in video games and what the U is developing, the department offers live information sessions every Friday at 10 a.m.