UCI adopts major of computer-game science

UC Irvine students can now study the complexities and intricacies in the design of computer games, the latest major in computer science to be offered at the university, officials said Friday.

It’s also a skill that’s incredibly marketable, given the number of computer game manufacturers in town, professors and faculty said.

By a 24-0 vote, the university’s Academic Senate approved the new major Thursday.

The computer-game-science major brings to seven the total number of possible majors in the field of computer science, which is as popular these days as engineering was a few years ago, professors said.

“This puts us at a competitive advantage with other universities now,” said Andre van der Hoek, an associate dean for student affairs, after the vote. “This major will provide students with a very solid computer science foundation. Students will be well-positioned for careers in this industry.”

The other majors are: informatics, biomedical computing, business information management, computer science and engineering.

According to van der Hoek, the game industry has grown tremendously over the past decade — and not just in what he called the “big blockbuster entertainment games.”

There is also a demand for “the more serious games,” which are often used in circles of education and as a way of training employees through simulation.

The trend of adding on to the computer science major is not new, according to van der Hoek.

He said universities worldwide are experimenting with how to go from a single major of computer science to a portfolio of majors, something the engineering field underwent a few decades ago, when it expanded to electrical, biomedical, mechanical and aerospace.

And it would appear as though there’s no better place to hold such classes as in Irvine and Orange County, where there are dozen of game studios, the most famous being Blizzard, which created World of Warcraft.

There’s also Supervillain Studios, which was started by a UCI alumnus, and Freeze Tag (freezetag.com), whose president plans to speak at one of the computer science classes in the coming weeks, said Dan Frost, a lecturer in the informatics department.

Under the new major, students will learn how to design game stories and game interfaces.

Courses will introduce theoretical and practical foundations and will follow up with in-depth project courses where teams of students will design their own games.

At first, Frost thought that there would be some opposition to a major as seemingly recreational as computer game science, but then he recalls reading about how Harvard University didn’t actually introduce English literature into its curriculum until the late 1800s.

“People were dismissive at the time,” he said. “Literature was supposed to be in Latin or in Greek, not English. And now look: English is a completely normal area of study.”

UCI is establishing a Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds.

And construction is underway on a 4,000-square-foot, 20-room “Cyber-Interaction Observatory” for faculty research. Plans call for floor-to-ceiling projection screens, 3-D stereoscopic displays and gesture-based interfaces.