High school students wishing to expand their knowledge about the world of video games are in luck. N.Y.U. will soon be taking applicants for its first Bachelor of Fine Arts program studying video game design.
However, competition will be tough: N.Y.U.'s Game Center, a department within the Tisch School of the Arts, will only accept 20 students for the program, which begins in January 2015.
The university began offering a Master of Fine Arts degree in game design last year with its first M.F.A. class graduating in May 2015.
One of those M.F.A. students, Tony Kao, was the recipient of the first Evolution Championship Series (Evo) scholarship, an award of more than $20,000. Evo is an annual electronic sports competition that focuses on fighting games.
Like other degrees N.Y.U. offers, this undergraduate degree will focus on hands-on activity within the game design field.
"If you study history, if you study literature, if you study science and engineering, you're not just studying for a job in that field, you're using that as a structuring element to understand everything else," says Game Center director Frank Lantz. It is the school's intention to help students use game design as a tool to think about the world around them.
The university hopes to expand its Game Center department by adding eight more professors to its current staff of six. The department also launched funding initiatives for graduates of its M.F.A. program, as well as the opportunity to work with others in the gaming industry, to take their student projects and turn them into commercial games.
Current classes at the Game Center include "Voice Acting for Video Games," a class taught by accomplished voice artist Jennifer Hale, whose work includes AAA titles like Mass Effect, BioShock Infinite and the Metal Gear series. The university also hosts lecture series on topics like the history of video games and how to make an innovative indie game.
Perhaps if video games aren't your thing, but you still want to get an interesting degree, you could consider something else. The University of Arizona offers degrees in race track management. The University of Connecticut can help you jump start your career in puppetry. And you can also learn how to work with turfgrass at Michigan State.
