Video game industry's needs spur schools to offer degree programs

At New England Institute of Technology, a bachelor's degree means the graduate can create a three-dimensional game. (Rockstar Games via Associated Press)

Eighteen months of playing video games in a lab - and learning how they work - might sound like goofing off. But that's how Sean Kaufmann earned an associate in science degree in game development and simulation programming technology.

Kaufmann, 21, graduated in May from the New England Institute of Technology in Warwick, R.I., and is now part of the school's new bachelor's program. He hopes to land a programming job and make a career out of something he's loved to do since he was a child.

New England Tech is one of numerous schools that have added degree programs in video game development over the past five years, prompted by demand from the gaming industry.

"Any degree you get will ultimately help you find a better job," Kaufmann said. "Employers know that you know the basics of game design and game programming."

As the gaming industry has evolved from Pong to Grand Theft Auto, its needs have changed, said Kent Quirk of Boston Post Mortem, the Boston-area affiliate of the International Game Developers Association. Quirk sits on an advisory board at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which has an interactive media and game development major, and is a software designer at Linden Lab, the Cambridge developer of Second Life, the online virtual world.

"It's not quite adequate to just get a degree in computer science," he said. "As the industry gets bigger and more specialized we need people with more specialized degrees."

Indeed, the video game industry is one of the nation's fastest-growing, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group. The industry posted an annual employment growth rate of 4.4 percent between 2002 and 2006 and is expected to have more than 250,000 jobs by next year.

Massachusetts, California, New York, Texas, and Washington have the highest concentration of video game jobs, employing more than 16,000 people in total.

The industry's annual revenue growth rate between 2003 and 2006 was more than 17 percent, compared with 4 percent for the US economy as a whole. Last year, the video game industry generated about $9.5 billion in revenue.

New England Tech started its associate's program in 2006. It added a bachelor's degree this spring; it has a dozen candidates. At least a dozen more have signed up to start in the fall. The associate's degree program has grown by 20 percent since 2007.

Interest from students and the industry prompted New England Tech to establish its programs, said Erik van Renselaar, chairman of the Information Technology Department. Admissions officers had been requesting such a program for several years, but the school initially didn't think it had the resources, he said. After researching the industry and assessing its staff, however, the school found that many faculty members already had programming skills that could be applied to teaching game development.

Graduates of the bachelor's program should be able to create a three-dimensional game from start to finish. The program includes a six-month project that involves student teams designing and developing a video game. Their work will be evaluated by three faculty members.

The associate's program consists of classes in computer programming, graphics, and animation. The goal is for graduates to be able to create a two-dimensional game by the end of the program. Assignments might include developing a story line for a game, or figuring out how to get a character to not only jump up, but also to land.

"Students really get a kick out of it," said associate professor Scott Lambert. "A lot of our gaming students are gamers themselves. They're getting to learn about something they like to do."