Synopsis for Building Northeastern University's Game Design curriculum from scratch

The presentation will introduce the speaker's background of eclectic production experiences and how this influenced the creation of three new Game Design dual-majors at Northeastern University this past year. Formed within the new "Creative Industries" program the degree program partners include Computer Science, Art + Design (Digital Art) and Art + Design (Graphic Design).

Learn how our committee spent more then a year doing competitive analysis of over 60 "game" related programs world-wide, what we came up with and why. Do we focus on content creation or 'game design'? What kind of programming focus? Do we teach a little bit of everything or focus on core specialty areas? How much flexibility do we leave to the student to craft his or her own program with electives? What kind of long term research initiatives do we develop? What tools do we choose?

We asked these questions and formed our answers within a team-based interdisciplinary Co-Op environment of Northeastern University, very fortunately in the heart of the very (very) busy Boston area game development community.