Students at Video-Game School Play it Smart

Nov. 19, 2006 — -- Americans proved this weekend they are passionate about games, as they clamored for the Sony's new PlayStation 3 and the ballyhooed Nintendo Wii.

Now, they can take that passion to college -- to the University of Southern California, which will issue its first undergraduate degrees in the discipline the school calls "interactive entertainment."

It has offered courses in game design since 1999 and graduate courses since 2002, among the earliest to do so.

But are games really a fit subject for an academic degree? Tracy Fullerton, who taught some of those first classes and designed the undergraduate program, finds nothing odd about studying game-making in a serious way, although she admits there were a few chuckles at faculty meetings early on.

"Games go back to the beginning of human culture," Fullerton says.

Game-playing, she adds, with its formal rules, goals, and order of play, is at the root of many serious endeavors -- including law, religion, and theater. It may not have much cultural respect today, but Fullerton points out that USC's now-famous film school was founded before movies were taken seriously as an art form.

USC aims to broaden the field beyond the shoot-'em-up games that the game companies have been cranking out.

The focus, Fullerton explains, is on the player experience. Students learn psychology, anthropology, classic "play theory" and even economics.

A number of students are working on so-called "serious games," including a "battle of ideas" and a game that challenges players to dole out medicine and love to children in the healthiest balance. (See one lab project at www.thatcloudgame.com.)

USC's interactive media program exists within its formidable School of Cinematic Arts, and the program builds on that school's long tradition of developing filmmakers.

"There are a lot of skills in common," Fullerton says.