"Video game industry's needs spur schools to offer degree programs" by Jennifer Batog, Globe Correspondent | June 23, 2008
Eighteen months of playing video games in a lab - and learning how they work - might sound like goofing off. But that's how Sean Kaufmann earned an associate in science degree in game development and simulation programming technology.
Kaufmann, 21, graduated in May from the New England Institute of Technology in Warwick, R.I., and is now part of the school's new bachelor's program. He hopes to land a programming job and make a career out of something he's loved to do since he was a child.
Pfffft!
Yup, I had to like reading books and studying history.
X -- Did not make our survey
New England Tech is one of numerous schools that have added degree programs in video game development over the past five years, prompted by demand from the gaming industry.
Oh, talk about CREATING a MARKET, huh?
Indeed, the video game industry is one of the nation's fastest-growing, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group. The industry posted an annual employment growth rate of 4.4 percent between 2002 and 2006 and is expected to have more than 250,000 jobs by next year....
So that's what we make now, huh? Sick and twisted fantasy games?
The industry's annual revenue growth rate between 2003 and 2006 was more than 17 percent, compared with 4 percent for the US economy as a whole. Last year, the video game industry generated about $9.5 billion in revenue....
All OVER-PRICED shit, too, I'll bet -- like the basketball sneakers.
Hey, there is your PROFIT MARGIN!!!
Interest from students and the industry prompted New England Tech to establish its programs, said Erik van Renselaar, chairman of the Information Technology Department. Admissions officers had been requesting such a program for several years, but the school initially didn't think it had the resources, he said. After researching the industry and assessing its staff, however, the school found that many faculty members already had programming skills that could be applied to teaching game development....
Isn't that great?! Create a market, and then hook 'em up to it (like a drug?)!
Plus, you can train them to operate weapons systems at the same time!
"Students really get a kick out of it," said associate professor Scott Lambert. "A lot of our gaming students are gamers themselves. They're getting to learn about something they like to do."
Sigh. So now video games are a college course.
Why did I have to love reading books and choose history as an interest, readers?
And to pile insult upon injury, damn near everything they taught me was a LIE!!
