Some believe that having a big-time college football team is the key to boosting enrollment. George Mason University has found that offering a degree in video game design does the trick, too.
Composers working on video game soundtracks seem to either be veterans of game-making or TV/movie folks crashing the medium. Take note, then, of schools like Berklee Music College in Boston that just might train people to compose music for games.
"The Art History of Games," a three day public symposium devoted to investigating games as an art form, will be held in Atlanta in early February, followed by the monthlong display of three commissioned art games.
More than 50 game development programs have been added to U.S. colleges' curricula in the past year, bringing to 254 the number of universities offering degrees in video game design, programming and art, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
The University of California-Irvine, already home to a game culture lab, has established the Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds. Twenty faculty members from the university's computer science, humanities, education and other departments will collaborate on its work.
The National Science Foundation has given two universities a million dollars to study whether video games can improve thinking skills in the elderly. They're using Boom Blox in the research.
Some deep reading over on Gamasutra on game design and narrative (courtesy of Company of Heroes narrative designer Stephen Dinehart) could be my next graduate school adventure.
A book by two professors of media studies examines the challenges of designing games on the Atari 2600, and posits that the infamous port of Pac-Man wasn't a half-assed effort after all.
Another weekend, another call for papers! This time around it's the Games+Learning+Society 5.0 conference, June 10-12 in Madison, WI.
