BS in Game Design

Description of the video:

The Media School Indiana University

Game animation is shown.

Senior lecturer Will Emigh speaks.

Game design is actually really useful because a lot of the content that we discuss is about systems and how you can create, design, analyze and identify systems.

Mike Sellers, director of the game design program, speaks.

The academic path is actually really carefully structured. You start off as a freshman or as a sophomore taking a basic game technologies course.

Student Gaby Benninghoff speaks.

I started this program like not knowing anything. By the end of the program, you know like everything in your department.

An animation produced by students is shown.

And then we have a sequence of courses in design and production along with another course in game art and sounds.

Student Noah Kankanala speaks.

At the end of that class, you got to make a project, and you got to make up your own assets, which is cool.

Sellers speaks.

One of the things we talk about a lot is building T-shaped people, where you have someone who knows a little bit about a lot of different areas, and then a lot about one area.

Students play games and talk to each other.

We ask students to focus on game art, sound, programming, design, or management. Management is really game productions.

A student team’s game is shown being played in the background.

So in addition to getting good liberal arts education here at IU, you get a very strong education in game design.

Emigh speaks. Footage from this year’s Shark Tank event is shown.

The capstone is unique in our program. Over the course of three semesters our students form teams and pitch ideas and come up with a game that then they take from start to finish.

Benninghoff speaks.

The team I've been working on, we started with four people on our team, and now we're at 11.

The team is shown working.

When you're on a team like that, we rotate roles a lot. Now I'm kind of like team lead, character artist, animator.

Kankanala speaks. He is shown working with his team.

I'm the sound designer on a team called Odyssey. And Odyssey, it's a sailing game. As a whole, like the capstone project thing, it basically allows for students to get experience working on teams and then basically just having colorful, vibrant dialogues about design. There been a lot of times where you like, you'll do something and it doesn't work. So you learn a lot from failures, stuff that's like very experiential.

Emigh speaks. More footage from an animation project is shown.

We want to give them that real-world experiences, then when they go into the industry, they can hit the ground running. The facilities here are amazing.

Video of the facilities is shown. Students are using the various features.

We have great conference facilities. We have multiple game labs, where students can use virtual reality technology. We also have a studio set aside for motion capture. And we recently got a rig to track facial features. And then we have the Game Lab. It's an area where there are workstations the students can work at, but it's also sort of a congregation area and it's kind of the heart of where the students are.

Students are shown working in the Game Lab.

GameDev@IU is a student organization that does a lot of workshops and just sessions where they pass knowledge, and mostly that happens in the Game Lab. So it's not something we can do without these facilities.

Benninghoff speaks. GameDev@IU members are shown.

The past couple of years in GD at IU, we were trying to create a community for the game design degree. We've tried really hard to make it feel like a home for everybody, especially the younger students coming in.

Sellers speaks.

We really are accepting and supportive women, people of color, of different ethnicities or orientations or religions or anything coming in here. One of the things that I've seen in my career is that more diverse teams are more creative. If you're a student at IU or if you're thinking about coming to IU, you should really consider game design if you have any interest in interactive systems.

A student is shown playing a game.

One of the things with games and game design is that you get to make something that people can really interact with. And there's nothing like seeing something that you've made, really put your heart and soul into, have someone play that and really get something out of it.

Video by Christina Mercedes
Music: “Day One” by Density and Time
Indiana University