Oregon schools use video game design to boost student enrollment, interest

PORTLAND — At age 7, Christopher Hernandez created a video game out of paper. He drew characters, painstakingly cut them out, then arranged them on his bedroom floor for his younger brother to pretend to play.

He didn't have a computer. He had never heard of someone making a living as a video-game designer.

A little more than a decade later, he is in a college classroom, showing off a game he spent two years making. It's "Yoshi's Isle, Sonic Style" — a combination of two popular games from the 1990s.

"Now, my dream job can come true," he says.

What used to be just a hobby for slackers is now a viable career for Oregon students. During the past several years, metropolitan Portland area schools began offering classes in video-game design such as the one Hernandez is taking at Mt. Hood Community College. Some colleges, such as the Art Institute of Portland, even offer degree programs.

Nationwide the past few years, the number of colleges and universities that teach game design has increased from 50 to 200, according to The Entertainment Software Association.

Meanwhile, gaming thrives: Last year, the industry grossed $18 billion in sales, a 43 percent increase from the previous year, according to the NPD Group, an independent consultant company.

Steve Fulton uses video-game design to teach literacy, math and art in Introduction to Computer Sciences at Tigard High School. After retiring from the Navy — where he designed weapons systems — Fulton planned to teach social studies and language arts. But he couldn't find a job. Teaching computer science gave him a job and a way to teach other subjects.

"They don't even know they're learning things," he says. "They think they're just playing games. It's a trick."

And the trick works. Students, even those flunking other classes, show up before school and during lunch to work on projects. They smile when talking about their impending final. Some even will show up for his class.

That excitement has been a boon for some colleges.

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, enrollment in computer classes plummeted, said Wayne Machuca, a Mt. Hood Community College instructor. To bounce back, Machuca two years ago suggested teaching a game-design class to recruit more students — especially minorities — into the program.

As classes, and then waiting lists, filled up, Machuca realized the college had hit on something. Students didn't want just a class — they wanted careers.

And local game-developing companies have jobs to offer. This year, Portland's Liquid Development produced more work than ever, creating art for several of the top 10 games of 2008, including Guitar Hero II.

Stefan Henry-Biskup, the company's vice president and creative director, says teens have more options because video games have grown increasingly complex.

"You're not just saving princesses anymore," says Gabe Olson, a recent graduate of the Art Institute of Portland who studied game design. "It's a story. And that storytelling is not linear. People are spending 14 hours at a time playing because of the interactivity. Designing something like that takes a lot of people, a lot of creativity."

It takes programmers, artists and marketers to make a video game. Mount Hood's program aims to teach all those skills. And as the work has changed, so have the designers.

"That stereotype of a game-designer nerd with big glasses and no friends is being dispelled," says senior Devin Mohr, who's one of Tigard's top students. "You can see that on Facebook quickly," she says, by the photographs people use and the way kids have used their computer knowledge to design their Facebook pages. "So many kids know code these days."

Mohr works hard to dispel other myths, even those of her parents. They'd rather she enter a more traditional field, such as graphic design. But she's an encyclopedia of knowledge about the gaming industry, who can tell you who created what character and when. She knows average starting salaries ($47,000) and which colleges offer the best programs.

Other parents see the potential. Hernandez says his father plays the games he designs. Riley Deets, a 14-year-old student at Tigard High, says his Intel-employed dad thinks he's on a path toward success, partly because game design can be used in nearly any field.

Fulton says designing weapons for the Navy was a lot like "a big video game." The military uses simulated war games to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Mt. Hood is developing a co-degree in health and computer sciences that will teach students to create programs that simulate diseases. Already the college uses game technology to teach nursing students, who learn from robots simulating real patients and gamelike reproductions of diseases.

Back in Mount Hood's design class, the students call themselves slackers. Victor Erskin is wearing a "Legend of Zelda" T-shirt. But the 17-year-old is also explaining the math used in determining the velocity of bullets in his game.

And Hernandez keeps a notebook of designs along with his schedule of tasks. One day, he hopes, his brother can go to the mall and buy one of his games. He'll make a living off his dreams.