A new class focused on video game design and production will be offered in the fall 2024 semester at El Camino College.
After a year and a half in the planning, “Games and Playable Media” was added to the university's curriculum, and hiring requirements for new faculty members were among the topics of discussion at the Academic Senate meeting on Tuesday, May 7th.
Games and Playable Media is a career technical education program that teaches students to develop and produce video games. This includes students who create their own programs to play.
The addition of gaming courses has been well-received by student gamers on campus, like Oscar Madera, a 22-year-old engineering major.
“I’m glad they’re finally bringing it to school,” said Madera, who is also a student worker at the Warrior Esports Center in the Schauerman Library. “So this market has been booming long before we hung out the diapers.”
In the Fall 2024 semester, the program will offer its first classes on GPM-100 and GPM-110, but course descriptions are currently unavailable. More will be added in subsequent semesters.
Classes that offer students stackable certificates and full associate degrees are also in the works.
The new program will include a new education department with the same name, which will collaborate with several other existing departments, said Moses Wolfenstein, coordinator of the Department of Distance Education.
“The games and playable media division is very unique due to the fact that it is inherently interdivisional,” Wolfenstein said. “We are currently working with art faculty, especially digital art… and computer science faculty, but we will also be collaborating with business faculty in the future.”
Wolfenstein, who also chairs the Library Learning Resources Department's Curriculum Committee and is an avid gamer himself, was approached in 2021 by Russell Sahr, dean of the School of Health Sciences and Physical Education, about advising the Warrior Esports Club. He said he received it.
“They were looking for an advisor, and he had heard that I knew something about the game, but there were no faculty members who could advise him on anything else,” Wolfenstein said. “…I thought, 'Sure, I know a lot about the game,' so I volunteered to advise them.”
Wolfenstein provided advice as the club changed its name to Warrior Gaming Club and discussed gaming and education with El Camino President Brenda Thames.
“We started talking about curriculum, and she said, 'Let's move on to making games.'” [part of the] curriculum,” Wolfenstein said.
But as Wolfenstein explores new educational territory, there were some obstacles to launching classes.
Because the field is so new to the education world, no master's degree is available to help recruit candidates, Darcy McClelland, Academic Senate vice chair for education policy, said in a presentation during the meeting.
“it is [Career and Technical Education] Field degrees and master's degrees are generally not available in this field, but that's very common,” McClelland said. “We have many [Career and Technical Education] This campus typically does not offer master's degrees in that field, so you can earn an alternative minimum qualification. ”
Alternative requirements were proposed to be either a bachelor's degree and two years of professional experience, or an associate's degree and six years of professional experience.
