Major in video games starting this fall at UCI

[duncan228]

Major in video games starting this fall at UCI
By Ian Hamilton
The Orange County Register

It's official, students will be able to major in video games at UC Irvine.

UCI, which is already outfitted with a Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds meant to expand research into those fields, will now let undergraduate students major in Computer Game Science after final approval was granted during a divisional senate assembly meeting on Thursday.

Here's a description of the major courtesy of UC Irvine:

"The Computer Game Science (CGS) major combines a solid foundation in computer science with a focus on designing, building, and understanding computer games and other forms of interactive media. The fundamentals of information and computer science, along with coursework in mathematics, statistics, physics, and film and media studies, provide students with the concepts and tools to study a wide scope of computer game technologies. CGS emphasizes design, team work, and the understanding of computer games and related technologies and media in a social and cultural context.

"The study of computer games is an emerging field that is driven by advancing computer hardware and software technology, the widespread popularity of video games as an entertainment medium, and by the interest of artists, economists, educators, scientists and many others, to use game technologies for communication, visualization, computation and learning."

This fall, freshman students who have already been accepted to UCI will be able to change their major, said Andre van der Hoek, associate dean of student affairs, in an e-mail. Transfer students will be allowed to major in CGS beginning in 2012.

He also said the major is not capped, so there's no limit to the number of students who can join.

[exstatic]

If these kids were smart, they'd take that first semester's tuition, buy a Macbook Pro, DL the iPhone SDK, set themselves up an LLC, and go into business for themselves. You can make decent money writing games for a company, but unless you're REAL lucky to get in with a startup and get stock, you'll never get rich.

[IronMaxipad]

I don't see why anyone would want to major in this. The videogame industry is currently struggling. Lots of studios have closed down the past year and there's been tons of layoffs.

Good luck.

[symple19]

win

[mojorizen7]

Our UAV is online.

[Scola]

If these kids were smart, they'd take that first semester's tuition, buy a Macbook Pro, DL the iPhone SDK, set themselves up an LLC, and go into business for themselves. You can make decent money writing games for a company, but unless you're REAL lucky to get in with a startup and get stock, you'll never get rich.

Your assuming that they would already know how to develop games... if they already knew that they wouldn't be in college trying to learn.

[blkroadrunners]

you can already do that at ACC

NVC too.