For the third year in a row, among its other rankings of colleges and universities in the North America, the Princeton Review has ranked the top game design programs.
Video games in all their forms and genres continue to become ever more mainstream, and the business and industry making them continues to grow along with. Colleges and universities have responded, over the past decade or so, by adding new interdisciplinary programs that teach the art and science of video game development.
The 2012 survey not only ranks the top schools for game design undergraduates and graduate students, but also reveals just how quickly these programs are taking hold. While in 2010, just two years ago, the initial survey ranked 50 colleges, this year's survey looked at over 100. The University of Southern California remains in the number one position, as it did in 2010 and 2011.
The full top 10 list this year for undergraduate game design programs:
1.) University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
2.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
3.) University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)
4.) DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, WA)
5.) The Art Institute of Vancouver (Vancouver, BC)
6.) Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)
7.) Shawnee State University (Portsmouth, OH)
8.) Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA)
9.) University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM)
10.) Becker College (Worcester, MA)
And for graduate-level programs:
1.) University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
2.) Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)
3.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
4.) University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL)
5.) Southern Methodist University (Plano, TX)
6.) Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)
7.) Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA)
8.) DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, WA)
9.) University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)
10.) Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA)
USC still tops as video game design plays on more campuses [USA Today]
(Top photo: Game Design Open House classroom | Flickr user vancouverfilmschool)