High school seniors considering a career making games have more options than ever before when it comes to college.
The number of universities and other academic institutions offering game design and development courses in the United States has reached 390, according to the Entertainment Software Association. That’s up 50 percent since 2009 when only 254 schools featured such programs. Game production is a multi-billion-dollar industry that often pays designers and coders well while also enabling creative expression. That combination of competitive pay with the promise to create something original and entertaining might explain the national growth of these design programs.
“Today’s colleges and universities are responding to student demand for high-quality and innovative video game design programs,” Entertainment Software Association president and chief executive officer Michael D. Gallagher said. “This explosive growth in video game education is the rocket fuel that will propel this industry to new heights. The new talent coming into our industry will revolutionize entertainment experiences.”
Top institutions like the University of Southern California and Drexel University have long featured highly regarded design programs, and it makes sense that more schools are offering courses in this growing field. As games make more money and make a bigger cultural splash with every passing year, more people are going to want the chance to work on them.
Earlier this week, publisher Activision revealed that its latest release, the sci-fi shooter Destiny that has players teaming up online to fight roving bands of aliens, made more than $500 million in one day. That’s more than many blockbuster movies make worldwide throughout their entire theatrical runs.
“As video games have become a major component of popular culture, we’ve seen more academic programs addressing games from a variety of perspectives,” Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center director Drew Davidson said. “Whether [that] be aesthetic, cultural, educational, or economic, this is only going to increase the influence video games have in our culture as students graduate with more of a critical grasp of the unique capabilities of games and apply that in their careers and lives.”
Last year, The Princeton Review released a ranking of the top game-design programs in the country. Top schools includes the University of Utah, USC, and DigiPen Institute of Technology.