How USC built one of the top video game schools in the country
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Tracy Fullerton is widely recognized as the key driver in making this the top program, but the article underplays her role.]
Mike Zyda, a professor at USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s computer science department and director of the GamePipe Laboratory at USC Games, has counted the number of games that have been shipped by alumni from USC’s game program. So far, it’s more than 790 million units.
Only nine years old, the USC Games program was built via a collaboration of educators like Zyda and Tracy Fullerton, associate professor and chair of SCA Interactive Media & Games Division and director of the USC Games Innovation Lab. The overall program has received a lot of accolades for producing so many game developers. And today, the graduate program has been named the No. 1 game design school in North America for the fifth year in a row by the Princeton Review. The undergrad program has been named No. 1 as well.
This year’s Advanced Games class is building seven games with teams ranging from 15 students to 60. The teachers include Zyda; Laird Malamed, chief operating officer at Oculus VR and a part-time instructor at USC; and Scott Easley, a two-time Emmy winner in animation and former Pixar animator.
Read the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/11/usc-zyda/