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April 24, 2005

Game design as the new liberal arts

“Much Fun, for Credit” is a great article in today’s New York Times about video game design majors at schools like RPI. Their take on game design as the driver of a new kind of liberal arts education is inspired:

…at R.P.I., a core group of humanities faculty is designing a bachelor’s degree in game arts and sciences that will essentially send students on a march through the classic liberal arts. Students will work their way through literature, higher level math, physics and fine arts before they emerge with industry-ready portfolios (they hope) that will convey specializations in programming and engineering, graphic arts, game design or applications outside the entertainment field - say, for fields like teaching or health care or simulations that might mitigate natural disasters.

To create games that seduce intellectually and emotionally, as well as dynamically and mechanically, through sight, sound and touch, R.P.I. students “will learn Shakespeare, they will learn statistics if they have to, they will learn fluid mechanics and art and history in the pursuit of what they really want to do,” says Ralph Noble, an associate professor of psychology. “I see this as a thematic way to get to the new liberal arts education, where you have Shakespeare and 3-D graphics as co-habitants.”

Posted by Andrew at April 24, 2005 05:50 PM

Comments

That sounds like a really cool program. It is about time game-design concepting was taken seriously as more than just a first-person shooter art ;-)

Posted by: christiane [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 27, 2005 04:13 PM