Carnegie Mellon program producing plenty of game designers

By Mike Crissey (AP)
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PITTSBURGH - It has turned out students who have landed internships and jobs with the companies behind games like "MechAssault," "The Sims," all of the "Madden" football games and the "Grand Theft Auto" series.

But don't call Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University a video game school.

It's not that Carnegie Mellon would be alone. There are at least four dozen schools nationwide, including Caltech, MIT, Michigan State, the University of Texas and Virginia Commonwealth University, that have courses in game design or development, according to an informal list compiled by the Entertainment Software Association, an industry group.

And it's not that the university is afraid of the competition. Other schools with master's-level programs and courses include the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California.

But co-director Randy Pausch and others maintain that the center, which costs $28,400 for two years, isn't like the others because it's not too techy and not too artsy.

Pausch shares an office with his co-director Don Marinelli, a professor of drama and arts management. "He's the right brain and I'm the left brain. I am free to be the nerd and he is free to be the artist, so we always have ourselves covered," Pausch said.

While there have been quite a few students who were hard-core programmers, drama students, artists, musicians and even one former newspaper graphic artist have studied at the center.

Instructors also run the gamut from computer scientists and game programmers to an attorney, a performance artist, a director, a marketing executive and the director of a theater in a natural history museum.

"We train the best people for the video game industry by not training them for the video game industry," Pausch said. "We work with people to work together on a broader set of challenges than just make a video game to prepare them."

It's apparently the right approach for the rapidly maturing video game industry.

"I think there is a tremendous thirst for a steady pool of talent that runs across a whole variety of disciplines from animation to software engineering to production to story-writing to sound engineering. This is an industry that is driven by talent and we are competing with Hollywood," Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein said.

The center and the university's master's program in entertainment technology have grown from eight students in 1999 to 85 master's students this year. Ten students a year get summer internships with Electronic Arts, the world's largest video game publisher.

About half of the center's graduates got jobs in the video game industry with companies such as Day 1 Studios, Electronic Arts and Rockstar Studios. Other have moved onto Disney Resorts, Industrial Light & Magic, Microsoft and Pixar.

Students can take courses in game design, which ranges from card to computer games, and computer programming, but they're not required. Artists don't have to become programmers and visa versa. One course that is required is an "introduction" to entertainment technology, which includes everything from painting to sculpture to the Internet, film-making and directing and even improvisational acting.

Students spend most of their time working in teams of as many as a dozen people, tackling projects much as they would in the industry. Most students spend 60 to 70 hours a week working on the projects, some which have to be finished in as little as two weeks.

The projects have included digital versions of puppets, a Napster- or iTunes-like service for classic video games, a virtual version of Benjamin Franklin and a program akin to a multiplayer first-person shooter to train firefighters how to handle hazardous materials.

"They don't teach you anything specific; most people come in with the skills they already have. It doesn't teach you art or programming but the intangible skills you learn after three years of being in the business," said Jon-Paul Dumont, 27, who graduated in May and is now working on the next version of a James Bond game for Electronic Arts.

ON THE NET
Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center: http://www.etc.cmu.edu
Entertainment Software Association: http://www.theesa.com/