Video game making: U of U hopes to offer new degree

Video game making: U of U hopes to offer new degree


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SALT LAKE CITY — The University of Utah is trying to get a new Master's Degree approved which could make its computing students more attractive to video game makers.

With several video game makers in the state of Utah, the demand for game producers and programmers is extremely high here.

Bob Kessler with the University of Utah School of Computing said, "The market is very robust. Our first set of students, which just graduated, all of them got jobs."

But Kessler says there has been a problem among students with an interest in making video games. Basically, there are two sides of the process; the artistic side and the engineering side.

"They're excellent artists, or they're excellent engineers," Kessler said, "but they're unfamiliar with working together, and that's the way businesses are run today."

Kessler says students on the artistic side haven't really respected the work done by the engineers, or vice versa, until they've been in the field for a few years.

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The school's proposed Masters of Entertainment Arts and Engineering can eliminate that by giving students better perspective on what the other side does.

"Students learn how the other side works. [They] learn how to, in essence, communicate and how do you ultimately respect the work that is being done by the other side," he said.

The Board of Trustees has approved the new degree. Kessler says the Board of Regents may consider it in December.

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Paul Nelson

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