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SALT LAKE CITY -- Believe it or not, you can study video gaming in college. More specifically, you can major in a program where video gaming is the emphasis.
Even though it's been a few years, Charles Mimnaugh can remember the reaction he got when he first told people he was majoring in video games at the University of Utah.
We look at EAE as merging the left (more logical) and the right (more creative) sides of the brain to develop a super brain.
–Bob Kessler
"They're like, ‘You hear that kid? He has video games," Mimnaugh said. "I'm like, ‘No, I'm serious. It's video games.'"
Look who's laughing now. Mimnaugh, a senior at the University of Utah, is on a team that created a game called The Last Pod Fighter. Soon, it'll be featured on Xbox LIVE's Indie Market.
"It doesn't really feel like a class, like most things feel like class, where you go, ‘Ugh, I gotta go do this stuff,'" Mimnaugh said. "This is a lot more fun, obviously."
An adrenaline-soaked, heart-pounding distillation of the experience of being hunted. It's Pac-Man meets Silent Hill in a first person perspective.
Minions! is a mission-based twin-stick shooter than can be played from both Top-Down and Third-Person perspectives.
Mr. Gravity is a puzzle platformer game in which the player controls gravity rather than the character to solve the puzzles.
Fight your way through waves of ships in this 3D arcade-style space shooter!
Take control of a pinball table from the inside.
It's also a lot of work. Mimnaugh's team spent a year designing its game. Tuesday, Mimnaugh -- along with other teams at the U -- held an event to show off what they've created.
"We put in a lot of hours, but it's a passion. We really get into it and get engaged with the work," said senior Michael Bradley, who worked on the game called "Minions!"
This particular class started in 2007. Thanks to a grant from Microsoft, students designed their games to work with the Xbox system. The games sell for a dollar online, but at this point it's not about the money: It's about the real-world experience.
"Once it's actually published on Xbox LIVE, we can actually just probably get into a job, just right off of the fact it's already published," said senior Tyler Robinson, creator of the "Mr. Gravity" game.
These real-world dreams just could come true, proving once and for all that all those kids who stayed inside playing video games were actually just getting ready for their future career.
"We take it seriously, and it's a lot of fun," Bradley said.
As far as job potential, the class professor told KSL it is a growing market with an average salary of roughly $80,000 a year.
Email: acabrero@ksl.com
