SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 2, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cogswell College, one of the world's leading regionally-accredited institutions offering a unique curriculum that fuses digital arts, engineering and entrepreneurship, today announced the offering of a new degree program, Game Design & Development. Students will have the option of majoring in either Game Design Art (GDA) or Game Design Engineering (GDE). Each specialization focuses on one of the two sides of game development: art and content development or game design programming and software development.
"The creation of this new program presents a strong opportunity for students to make games in a more realistic industry environment," says Jerome Solomon, assistant professor of Cogswell's new game design program. Solomon is a film and game industry veteran, and currently sits on the National Committee for ACM SIGGRAPH.
"Typically, games are created by multidisciplinary teams," Solomon continues. "Cogswell is one of only a handful of schools that bring together all of the elements of game development. We have students and faculty with expertise in art, engineering, design, audio, and entrepreneurship that work together on teams. This is exactly like the composition of game development teams in the industry."
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the need for software developers will grow 30 per cent by 2020, equaling approximately 1.1 million new jobs or 14 per cent of all occupations in the U.S. economy. This demand is fueled by the gamification of everything from law enforcement to education to healthcare, which requires skills in game design, art, animation and programming and constitutes a significant portion of the projected 1.1 million jobs.
Last week's Game Developer's Conference was held in San Francisco. Thousands of hopeful game design and engineering graduates and job seekers flocked to the Career Pavilion that housed over 50 booths including Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and WB Games along with various schools and recruiters.
Solomon visited the pavilion on behalf of the college and was encouraged by the positive reception to Cogswell's new program from the industry exhibitors.
"Game development companies are either looking for an artist or an engineer," explains Solomon. "Larger studios look for very specific skills; smaller studios look for those with multiple skills. The employers we met with were extremely receptive to the fact that we have every component of game development here at Cogswell, which creates a real-world, industry work environment for our students."
About Cogswell College
Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Cogswell College is an accredited four-year institution of higher education with a curriculum that fuses art, engineering and entrepreneurship (http://www.cogswell.edu/academics/programs.php). As one of the Bay Area's premier colleges, its novel academic approach offers an integrated model that emulates the industry environment—a collaborative, project-based, learning approach that uses multidisciplinary teams to take projects from concept through the delivery pipeline.
Cogswell alumni credits include the world's best-selling video game, Call of Duty, The Sims, Need for Speed, Neverwinter, The Elder Scrolls V and blockbuster films including Life of Pi, Snow White & the Huntsman, Cars, Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Spider-Man, Harry Potter and Thor. Student-created films have garnered scores of national awards (http://www.cogswell.edu/student-work/worlds-apart.php) and Cogswell alumni have gone on to careers with Activision, DreamWorks, Disney, Electronic Arts, Pixar and Microsoft Game Studio as well as starting their own creative ventures.