Video Game Design Class for High Schoolers

In the summer of 2005 I applied for a scholarship sponsored by EA and USC for a female to attend a class about video game design within USC’s Summer Seminars Program. In the first year of offering the class, no girls had applied, so to encourage more high school girls to apply, this scholarship was offered. Part of the application was writing an essay titled “Why I Want to Grow Up to Make Games”. In the end they could not narrow it down to just one girl, so three girls, including me, were awarded the scholarship, which covered the tuition for the class (which was worth 3 college credits) and room and board at USC. It was a lot of fun, it helped increase my confidence in my skills, and it was a great way to prepare me for attending USC that fall. We even visited EALA multiple times and spoke with and were given lectures by many people within the company (and we got to buy games for cheap…). For the final project of the class I made a game called “Stan the Blockman”, and I will talk about it in its own post sometime. The class got some media attention including an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly (which I will also post eventually), and a segment on the PBS news show called “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”. You can watch a video of the segment by going here, and clicking the button that says “Click here to watch this segment in streaming video”, or you can read the transcript that is on the same page (but then you won’t get to see me! Why would you do that?).

Demo Day a Success!

My major in Computer Science (Games) is very new at USC but it has really been growing and getting more recognition every semester! You can check out the success of Demo Day last Tuesday in an article on CNET (talk about major publicity, eh?). Demo Day is an end of the semester event for teams of students to show off their game projects to industry professionals from many game companies such as Activision, Harmonix, etc. None of my projects were involved this time but the games I will be working on in future classes will be, so I am very excited about the future of this program. You can find out more information about the Gamepipe program at gamepipe.usc.edu.