Video Game Academy

“Leadership in education and research that combines technology and fine art
to create new processes, tools, and vision for storytelling and entertainment.”

The only Masters in Entertainment Technology (MET) program in the country was founded by Don Marinelli and the late Randy Pausch to bring right-brain and left-brain students together in a collaborative environment. Having technologists and non-technologists work together on projects that produce artifacts intended to entertain, inform, inspire, or otherwise affect an audience/guest/player/participant lies at the crux of the ETC experience.

Bring the ETC methodologies to an audience enraptured with their digital devices—high schoolers. There is a misconception that being good at playing video games results in a person skilled at creating video games. Students will discover just how much hard work and talent is needed to be successful in the real world of video game design.

No matter what career path students choose, they will develop the skills necessary for communication, creative expression, and job preparedness in a digital world.

An interdisciplinary program, these courses appeal to • artists • historians • writers • programmers •
gamers • actors • designers, and others.

Doesn’t every high-schooler want to take a course in video game design?! These courses engage and motivate students, but also contain the rigor and “hard skills” to satisfy demanding curriculum requirements.

Need more convincing?! Here's an excellent blog written by Jon Radoff entitled Six Wonderful Things About Games.

Look in the Course Catalog for detailed course descriptions and author biographies.

Transcript of the video of Don Marinelli endorsing the Zulama/ETC Video Game Academy

When you talk about STEM, when you talk about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, you really need to have STEM +A, you need to add the Arts. You need to add the creativity portion to that. And the Zulama curriculum is the only one out there that is building upon the right brain and left brain attributes, and is doing this through something that every kid loves—and that is a good story, a good game, a good challenge, a simulation that's engaging. And that's why, when I look at Zulama, I think “yeah” this is the true preparatory course for anyone aspiring for a career in the entertainment industry, the education industry, or what we call the experience industry—simulations and things like that. So I'm a firm believer that this is it, this is definitely a worthy program, and it warrants having the ETC seal of approval.

Transcript of the video of Chris Klug describing the Game Design courses

One of the best things about game production classes is teaching the idea of collaboration. In the game industry, games are built by hundreds of people. It used to be true that games were built by one or two people, that's not true any more. These teams are 100, 200, 300 people in size, and it's important that people understand that it's not their ego which is driving the creation of the game but their ability to work and collaborate with others.

Camraderie is built up amongst students and everybody has their part to play. The artists create the art, the designers do some writing and they create the game systems, and the marketing people come up with a way to sell the game to the other students. It is an experience much like the theater club or the high school newspaper or the film club.

Games always mirror the state of society, games always mirror the available technology of society For instance, card games came into popularity after the printing press came into being and everyone could get their hands on a deck of cards. Before the printing press, cards had to be hand-painted. All those inventions get discussed in the Games Through the Ages course and you can see how society is mirrored in the games people play.

It's also important to understand that you don't need to be a programmer to take one of these game development courses. They are designed for students who are writers, who are simple artists, students who have ideas about marketing, along with computer programmers who might want to get a handle on how games are built. Just because you are not technically inclined shouldn't get in the way of you thinking that these courses are for you. It's important to understand that all the skill sets are used in the production of games.

Transcript of Ruth Comley describing the Art and Programming courses

My name is Ruth Comley and I am developing classes for Zulama to help high school students learn how to program and how to do digital art.

These are two different separate sections of classes serving two different functions. Students in high school who want to learn a little bit more about games programming can take the programming classes, and learn about programming by programming games.

They are having fun with step-by-steps on some projects and other projects where they are given a game doc and we say “go ahead, have at it, create a game.” The art students are also learning digital art, learning what it is to create 3-dimensional models that then will be game elements inside of a game. We use a lot of what we call templates to allow people to bring those elements into a game-like environment and at least see what they look like based on how the graphics card is going to render them.

It gives these students to get a chance to kind of get an idea of what it is going to take if they really do want to get into the gaming industry.

Both areas, programming and art require a lot of skill and a lot of time to practice and really polish those skills. In the gaming industry if you want to get in, you have to be able to work with other people. So a programmer needs to know enough about art to understand how to talk to an artist. And an artist needs to know enough about programming to be able to talk to a programmer.

The classes are in two main areas: programming and digital art.

The programming classes allow high school students to learn a little bit about game programming by building games.

The digital art classes allow artists to see what it is like to create game elements. Utilizing digital art, we then utilize templates to be able to take their game elements and bring them into something that looks like a game and they can see how it gets rendered off a video card.

Both of these classes are really great to give high school students the ability to see what it is like in the gaming industry. Through all three sections of these classes—game design, programming, and art, you can learn a lot more about whether this industry is right for you.

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