Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

An article by CNN yesterday mentioned about a new program at University of Southern California - study of interactive entertainment. This program is in collaboration with EA where Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts was appointed to be the faculty chair. There are many similar programs are offered globally. As far as I am concerned, there are some courses offered at SFU Surrey campus (Previously TechBC) on game theories and media design. There are no such course offered in UBC at the moment.

Facing the huge market potential in the game industry today, a game theory degree makes a whole lot sense for a university to offer. The challenge lies in what would be the balance in game theory and game development (Arts/Science); the overall work load for the students; relevancy with other university courses; commercial partnership and sponsorship etc. I personally think Game Design and Game Development are two separate subject, one can be offered as a specialized program in collaboration with the Computer Science department and the other one can be offered by the Faculty of arts as a Film Study or Creative Writing program. Just my two cents…

Here is the link to the USC interactive entertainment program:
http://www.uat.edu/multimedia/gamedesign/