Georgia Tech’s burgeoning Game Studio is emerging as a leading hub of video game research and development under the direction of professors Ian Bogost and Blair MacIntyre. The dynamic duo started the Studio two years ago to explore the myriad ways gaming can be a critical tool for teaching and training, in addition to its existing role as a popular mode of entertainment. Make no mistake: Mass-market video games are big money. Last September, Grand Theft Auto V, the latest in the popular franchise from Rockstar Games, sold $800 million worldwide in 24 hours—the most successful launch of any entertainment property ever. That includes movies, records, you name it. For comparison, it took four weekends for this summer’s Transformers movie to hit $800 million. To put it simply, video
game revenues dwarf the box office and most other forms of entertainment. Based on the immensity and longevity of the gaming indus tr y, it makes perfect sense for two of the industry’s leading researchers to set up shop at one of the world’s top research universities and try to push the medium forward. And that’s exactly what Bogost and MacIntyre aim to do. “We’re really interested in stopping and thinking about where gaming is today,” Bogost says. “It’s important to look back historically at where gaming has come from, and then look forward to see where it might go in the future. All kinds of new opportunities exist for video games.” This combination of theory and practice is something that Bogost and MacIntyre are trying to bring into the studio environment. “It’s very, very, very different than the vast majority of activities that take place at an institution like Georgia Tech,” Bogost says. And it’s an approach Bogost and others had back in 2005 when they co-wrote an article for the International Digital Media and Arts Journal titled “Asking What Is Possible: The Georgia Tech Approach to Game Research and Education.” University-based game development programs, he and his co-authors wrote, tend to focus on two separate activities: game production, which has traditionally fed the industry with workers who have the skills and understanding needed to bring a game to market, and game studies programs, which analyze the gaming environment in a research-oriented and theoretical way.
Ian Bogost is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and a professor of interactive computing at Tech, where he also holds an appointment in the Scheller College of Business. In addition, he is founding partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic.
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GTALUMNIMAG.COM VOLUME 90 NO.3 2014