Video Games Find Place in Curriculum

Worried that your kids are spending hours at the computer playing Doom and Tomb Raider and neglecting their studies? Afraid that they will master Star Wars Rogue Squadron but not Hemingway and Fitzgerald?

Think again. Those video games may give them a head start for college. UC Irvine this fall will offer the first program in the nation dedicated solely to studying video games, from their growing role in American culture to their design.

The university’s Interdisciplinary Gaming Studies Program is the latest sign that video games have moved from Pong and Pac Man in video arcades to the province of teenage boys with joysticks linked to home computers, CD-ROMs and the Internet. But that’s something Wall Street realized a while ago.

Studies show that consumers spent as much money on video games last year--if not more--as they did on movie tickets, about $7 billion. As the industry continues to grow, video games generate movies and movies generate video games and the lines between the two grow fuzzier.

“Think about the appeal of video games today compared to five years ago,” said Rusty Reuff, senior vice president for human resources at Electronic Arts Inc. in Redwood City, the world’s largest video game company. “Five years ago, it was still a burgeoning media form. Today it’s a mass media form.”

Experts compare the emergence of video games with the growth of film. Both were initially considered toys used by small, almost cult-like groups, then spread to mass audiences and then into academia.

“When I started teaching at MIT 10 years ago, all my students wanted to be filmmakers,” said Henry Jenkins, director of the university’s comparative media studies program, which includes classes on video games. “Now they want to be game designers.”

Classes in video games are taught at colleges throughout the country, from USC to New York University. DigiPen, a small college in Redmond, Wash., specializes in video games and offers two- and four-year degrees. Usually the classes are given as part of digital studies or media studies programs.

But Irvine’s undergraduate program will be the first to bring together a broad selection of academic fields to study video games, including psychology, human kinetics, studio art, information science, drama and dance. Students will study not only the design and programming of games, but also their effects on society.

“Instead of students with one major and a deep understanding of one area, we’re looking at computer science majors who want to be visually literate, who want to have some design skills, and artists who want to know something about programming so they can really get into the inner workings of the applications they create with,” said Jill Beck, dean of arts at UC Irvine.

Reuff thinks the multidisciplinary approach is a good one. “When they’ve come out [of Irvine], they’ve seen a glimpse of everything and can make a decision on what specialist path they want to go on,” he said. “It will create a much more well-rounded person for us to choose from.”

Robert Nideffer, who heads the Irvine program, said the idea of Donkey Kong’s being studied in a university has not always been a winner. “When you even say games or gaming, it automatically has a stigma attached to it and people approach it as something that shouldn’t be brought into academia or is too narrow in its focus,” he said. “To me, those are all the more reasons to be looking at it critically. It’s having such a tremendous impact on our pop culture and our kids’ consciousness.

Nideffer, 36, looks like a gamer himself. “I can pass,” he said. “It’s not like I have to act.”

He was dressed recently in black nylon pants baggy enough to fit another person inside them, a black shirt and a black cap that covered his shaved head. He wore a goatee.

Sitting on the computer in his office were the video games Conquer and Nox. His favorites are Donkey Kong and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A gas mask hung on his coat rack. “It’s a Christmas present from my mom,” he said. “Don’t ask.”

His appointment as an assistant professor of studio art and information and computer science, with a doctorate in sociology, symbolizes the eclectic nature of the program.

UC Irvine’s program will begin as an emphasis, a step below a minor, but university officials hope to see it grow in the same manner as the related digital arts minor. That program began with 100 students and grew to more than three times that size in three years, with a waiting list of 340. They hope to expand it to 600 students in the fall.

Much of the impetus for the video game program came from the students. “They’re growing up with computer games, and these environments are second nature to them,” Beck said. “They understand they are having profound social impacts, and they’re seeing the economy is reflecting this. They’re seeing their lifestyle and career opportunities are converging in this area of arts and computer science.”

The university expects the video game industry to embrace the program, and already has received a donation of $1 million in software from game maker Alias/Wavefront.

“This entertainment so deeply influences us that we should have a resource we can go to to see what the meaning of it is,” said Mark Sylvester, a founder of Alias/Wave-front. “That’s why when I heard of the project, I thought it would be a very good thing to spend some money on.”