GAME ACADEMY Learning Multidisciplinary Problem-Solving through Large-Scale Collaborative Production

Picture yourself watching a movie that you can control. You can make decisions as the story unfolds, determining which choices the protagonist makes and then seeing the results play out in front of you. This is exactly what SD Upper School students are creating as part of the Game Academy course sequence.

The game design industry is mind-bogglingly huge, larger, in fact, than the film industry. Still, in many respects, it remains in relative infancy. San Domenico Game Academy

Lead Bruce Gustin likens the current state of the industry—which includes technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality

(VR)—to that of personal computers in 1980: on the precipice of exponential growth and ubiquity. Apple, Microsoft, HP, and Facebook’s parent company Meta are all investing billions in the sector, as these companies see the future being not about games per se, but simulations. For instance, imagine a doctor performing a dozen heart surgeries—and analyzing the results—before ever operating on a real patient.

Gustin created many of the courses now being taught in the SD Game Academy, all of which have gained UC approval (fulfilling University of California application requirements by demonstrating the rigor of a college preparatory course). The program at SD is singularly unique in its integration with other Upper School arts programming. San Domenico is the first school in the country to o er this level of cross-functional collaboration between programs because we believe the future workplace demands integrated skills.

The Game Academy course sequence begins with Essentials of 3D and XR Environments, before branching into courses that include not just programming, but digital art and English as well. Second-year Game Academy students can join students from our animation, digital art, and film pathways, where together they learn to produce three-dimensional work in the 3D Animation/XR Assets course, or learn storytelling across film, television, and games in an Honors English course. The third-year class brings these writers, musicians, modelers, and animators together to make a single, complicated, multidisciplinary project using industry tools including Unity, Maya, Blender, Substance 3D, and Logic Pro. Fourth-year students return as production managers to steer the next year’s entire project.

The big learning moments extend far beyond the technological tools at hand. “In the Game Academy, we are not teaching students how to code,” explains Gustin. “We’re teaching them how to think through a problem. How do you identify, understand, and then solve that problem? How can you know if the solution actually worked?”

Through large team projects, students learn collaboration, project management, and perseverance. They learn how to work with people, how to understand project scope, and how to successfully change direction midstream. In short, they are learning how to succeed in the world.