video game majors!

After the discussion during the last class about majoring in video games, I decided to do some research and found out that lo and behold! There are MANY big universities that offer video game majors! This NY Times article from last year talks about how there are undergraduate and graduate programs in video game design and "interactive entertainment" springing up at bigger universities including the University of Southern California.

Although this field is not widespread in academia, I still think it's an exciting start. This short NPR audio file talks a little about video games too. USC enrolled its first class majoring in video game development this year. There are students in the clip who talk about video games in a very literary way too. One guy says how he's "very much a postructuralist, this is very much a Michel Foucault video game." Sounds pretty much like academic lit crit to me. The news commentator definitely makes the point that some of the students talk more like literary critics than game designers.

So, it does look like it's possible to engage in the actual technical practice of designing games as well as immersing themselves in those critical studies that are expected of a liberal arts education. The world of game designers and the world of academics doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, as evidenced by such programs. These kids sound like intelligent academically-inclined students as well as artists. The latter point is emphasized in the NY Times article, and I noticed that the piece was even in the Arts section instead of technology.

To me it looks like we don't need to privilege the game world or academic world and that they can work hand-in-hand toward something positive. And as for critics who "pooh-pooh the trend" or don't see it as legit, I'd say to them that majoring in such a field will probably also increase a person's marketable aspects exponentially, especially considering the increasingly popular state of gaming these days.