UCSC Games & Playable Media and Serious Games MS Programs
As anticipated in my prior
post, the Baskin School
of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz is launching the first professional master’s
degree program in Serious Games offered in the United States, with an initial
cohort of students starting in fall 2019. Applications for the M.S. in Serious
Games were accepted until January 24, 2019.
Image
credit: UCSC's Silicon Valley Campus in Santa Clara
The
Silicon Valley Campus is home to the UCSC M.S. in Serious Games
“Our professional programs in games and playable media and Serious
Games are project-oriented and emulations of professional environments,” said
Michael John, a teaching professor of computational media who has more than 25
years of industry experience with both Serious and Entertainment Games. “Each
quarter you might make three or four games, and they won’t all be good;
actually most of them won’t be good, but the process of building lots of little
interactive toys and games is how you learn, and that turns out to be a key
skill in the workplace.”
The new program will train students over five academic quarters in six key
areas: game design, game technology, eliciting and integrating subject matter
knowledge, designing and conducting efficacy measures, effective teamwork, and
career planning. It will culminate in a capstone project. The program's
location in the heart of Silicon Valley and the close relationships of faculty
with industry are expected to create ample opportunities for students.
Image
credit: UCSC Baskin Engineering Website
Jim Egen
dons a virtual reality helmet and paddles to test ASSIST lab's stroke
rehabilitation game.
UC Santa Cruz already
offers two of the most highly rated game degree programs in the country: a B.S.
in computer game design and M.S. in games and playable media, both in the top
20 of Princeton
Review’s Top Game Design Schools.
Much of the credit for the early emphasis on games at UC Santa Cruz goes
to Jim Whitehead, professor and chair of computational media. In 2004, he began
developing a program for computer science students who wanted experience with
game development. When the campus began offering a B.S. in computer game design
in 2006, it was the first program of its kind in the UC system and one of the
few in the country.
During the past decade, UCSC alumni have helped create the latest
generation of games. Whitehead said he foresees the same thing happening with Serious
Games. Some students currently enrolled in the games and playable media program
are already planning to switch to Serious Games. “There’s a lot of overlap
between Serious Games and more entertainment platforms,” he said. “They work
with the same programming languages, but there are definitely divergence
points.”
Those divergence points provide the rationale for having two separate
programs. “If you’re doing a Serious Game, there’s some sort of outcome
expected, and it’s really important to measure whether you’re getting there or
not. So there’s an important assessment component,” Whitehead said.
Designing games with assessment built in seems like a subtle
distinction but often requires an entirely different design philosophy. Another
reason for separate programs, according to Whitehead, is that the students
interested in them are quite different.
Edward Melcer, assistant professor of computational media, teaches a
required course on the fundamentals of Serious Games. “So many people see the
potential of games to do something important, but shy away,” Melcer said.
“People think they have to have all this technical knowledge or be a hardcore
gamer to do Serious Games, but we don’t require that. We want people with
passion, people who want to do something for their audience.”
More information about the M.S. in Serious Games at UC Santa Cruz is
available online at gpm.soe.ucsc.edu/admissions