Art School Palette Adds Video Games
Travis Castillo was interested in only one type of gift when Christmas or his birthday rolled around: video games.
Over time, the 22-year-old has accumulated 14 gaming systems and has hundreds of cartridges and compact discs to go with them.
But while some parents may complain that all that gaming is a mind-numbing waste of time, Castillo has decided to put it to use for what he hopes will be a lucrative career. All his countless hours of Mario Brothers and Tenchu ninja swordplay are being put to an unusual challenge: a college degree in computer gaming.
A network of trade and career schools known as the Art Institutes is offering what’s believed to be the only bachelor’s degree in video game art and design in the country, industry experts say. The school chain, which specializes in fashion, design, culinary arts and media arts, has 27 sites. Ten of those offer the video gaming program, including four of its five California schools: Santa Monica, Santa Ana, San Diego and San Francisco.
The program, launched in 1999 at the Art Institutes’ Phoenix campus, was cited in the January issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly as one of the top five game degrees being offered in the world.
In Santa Monica, Castillo has enrolled in the three-year, $60,000 program in hopes of quickly entering the booming video game industry as a game designer.
While movie sales were registered at $8.4 billion last year, the video game industry made $9.4 billion.
That potential persuaded the 40-year-old school to offer the gaming studies, said David Pauldine, president of the Art Institutes, which has its headquarters in Pittsburgh. “The visual impact of the game has increased drastically. The games people play are more realistic, and that’s going to require competent game art designers,” he said.
Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Assn. in Washington, D.C., said the establishment of gaming degrees was inevitable because of the increasing scope and popularity of the industry. But he said students should look carefully at the qualifications of instructors because the field is still relatively new.
“This is a natural evolution in the education setting,” Lowenstein said. “Not just for commercial reasons, but from an artistic and creative standpoint.”
A handful of schools offer a master’s degree related to computer gaming, including USC, Georgia Institute of Technology and Rochester Institute of Technology. In addition, there are dozens of courses at universities that explore aspects of video gaming.
The Art Institutes’ program is not for computer programmers but creative designers. Think of the degree in terms of a movie.
Graduates intend to be the equivalent of the screenwriter, director, and costume and set designer rolled into one.
“It’s like being God of a virtual universe,” Castillo said.
Students spend weeks honing their skills with pen and paper to practice drawing three-dimensional figures. One of the most important lessons is anatomy. By understanding how muscles and bones work, artists add realism to their renderings. Later, students can make clay models to refine their characters.
Another required course is story development, a crucial part of role-playing games that place more emphasis on plot than “shoot ‘em up” action. As video games continue to resemble feature films more, story lines have become important selling points for all genres. So students are taught how to concoct variations on classic themes such as the fatal flaw, the feuding brothers and the star-crossed love affair.
“With technology getting better,” said Josh Leyshock, a 19-year-old student, “computer games have one place to go: up.”
Tom Megis, a veteran game designer who also teaches at the institute’s year-old program in Santa Monica, said that because of their tight budgets, video game companies are not likely to train employees. So he believes his graduating students will have an edge over other job candidates. (Some salaries in the field start around $30,000, but a top designer or programmer can make more than $100,000).
“Having some kind of formalized talent pool can only help,” Megis said.
However, the instructor has warned his charges that the classroom is a far cry from the competitive professional world. He tells them about the rigors of the career -- for example, getting as little as four hours’ sleep a night for months because of a deadline to produce a new game. Relationships were ruined because of the jobs.
But for some of the 111 students in the Santa Monica program, things still are fun and games. They keep up on new games the way film students prowl movie premieres.
One student got hold of a yet-to-be-released and much-anticipated Dune III. The space fantasy game always draws a crowd but is so visually demanding on hardware that it slows down the entire computer network at the school. Administrators have to look for students playing it and order them to stop.
“This is a fantasy for these students,” said Vi Ly, academic department director for the school. Being a game designer “is like getting paid to play,” she added.
Some students say it’s ironic that they’re studying video gaming because it was blamed for compromising so much schoolwork when they were younger. Many, including Castillo, had to spend months convincing their parents it was a viable form of study before enrolling at the institute.
Through contacts at school, Castillo landed an internship at one of the nation’s largest video game distribution companies, Activision, conveniently located in Santa Monica. There, in the underground “dungeon,” Castillo samples the firm’s works in progress during his free time.
“I’ll be playing a game and then the creator will walk in and talk about issues making it,” he said. “I’m finding it really helpful seeing how they think.”
Recent releases of such games as “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” and “Battlefield 1942” have shown that games can be an addictive world where social codes can be ignored or history rewritten. The potential, he says, is huge.
“I’m sure in 10 to 20 years people will say video games are a legitimate art form,” said Castillo. “I can see it push further than movies because you can immerse people in it.”
