Students at DigiPen Are Too Busy With Math to Play a Lot of Games
By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 13, 1998
REDMOND, Wash. -- It isn't all fun and games, although
games are the reason they are here. At the DigiPen
Institute of Technology, the first school in the U.S.
to offer a four-year diploma in Real Time Interactive
Simulation -- a k a video games -- students grind away,
not at "Red Alert" or "Tetris" or "Myst," but at planar
analytic geometry, algorithm analysis and advanced
surface modeling.
Founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1988, DigiPen
relocated to the heart of Seattle's high-tech alley two
years ago and is becoming known as the "Top Gun" of video-
game schools.
"This is like a dream," says 18-year-old Richard Vorodi,
who trekked here all the way from Elizabethtown, Pa. Mr.
Vorodi remembers feeling like an outcast in high school
because he eschewed sporting events to attend Nintendo
tournaments. "You didn't really want to talk about it
because people would label you a geek," he says. Mr.
Vorodi loves the way games can make people "scream
and jump up and down." Now, he says, "I want to create
something like that."
Housed in a corporate office building owned by Nintendo
of America a unit of Japan's Nintendo Co., DigiPen's
130 students attend lectures in one of two industrial-
beige classrooms or a Spartan lecture hall. They have
no lounge, no football team, no dorm, no convenient
place to eat except the 7-Eleven down the street.
Each student does have his own cubicle and, of course,
his own high-powered PC.
If DigiPen seems more like a corporation than a school,
students look more like they are going to a rock concert
than to work. On the first day of fall semester last month,
one young man -- most of the students are young men --
tosses a mane of dyed black hair while inspecting the
black polish on his fingernails. Dress is mostly scruffy
jeans, shorts and T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like
"Bite Me." Nose and eye rings are de rigueur.
But the informality belies a tight discipline. Students at
all times must wear security ID cards equipped with microchip
monitors. They are prohibited from hanging out in hallways.
And if they miss too many classes without a legitimate excuse,
they are expelled. "It's almost a farm team for the industry,"
says Cedric Page, associate director of Washington's Higher
Education Coordinating Board, the state agency that authorized
the school to grant bachelor of science degrees.
Indeed, DigiPen was started with just that idea in
mind 10 years ago by Claude Comair, a now 40-year-old
Lebanese-born computer-animation specialist. Originally,
DigiPen (the name stands for "digital pencil") offered
classes in computer animation for corporations. But
with sponsorship from Nintendo, which by providing
equipment and classroom space gets the right to be
first to offer graduates a job, Mr. Comair opened the
Vancouver campus to a two-year game program in 1994.
For the four-year campus that opened this year, he
recruited experienced game developers like Christopher
Erhardt, 42, who had designed three dozen games for
companies like Activision Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc.
"I wanted to help teach students what it's really like
out there," he says.
DigiPen is not about playing video games, says Vivek
Melwani, a 1997 graduate. "It's hard work, long hours,
intensively intensive." On the first day of class,
students get organized into development teams, which
include a producer, designer and game debugger for the
games each student is required to develop each semester.
Students begin by working on a puzzle game like Nintendo's
Tetris. Then they move on to a children's game like the
original "Super Mario Bros.," in which characters jump
back and forth. Later they are introduced to three-
dimensional games, including the fighting sort.
Faculty members like Mr. Erhardt say that as students
mature, many want to develop complex adventure games
with a central character like James Bond. Indeed, former
student Mandi Paugh, one of the school's few female
graduates, says the games that keep her coming back
are those with interesting, involved story lines.
Ms. Paugh says she will play just about any game.
"Mega Man" is good for the "plot lines," she says.
"Ultima 6" to "mess with your surroundings. " "Tetris
Attack" for the "polish" -- extra details that aren't
needed for the game but that "add charm." But, she
says, the challenge for game designers and the trick
to a good game is that it shouldn't be the same every
single time you play. "That gets boring," she says,
"and at that point you might as well rent instead
of buy."
Recently, student projects have included an arcade
driving game, "Smash 'n' Dash" and "Crown of Orion,"
a horror game featuring vampires, werewolves, and
zombies. For art, students often collaborate with
others enrolled in DigiPen's 3D animation classes.
DigiPen owns the copyright to any games students
develop, and they are asked to minimize the gore.
To earn a B.S. degree, students must complete 154
credits, 34 more than most state-operated schools,
primarily in math and computer science (there are no
humanities courses). Days stretch from 9 a.m. to
10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Tuition is $6,000
a semester; room, board and books add about $4,000 more.
Still, young people flock to get in. The current class
of 100 was chosen from 600 applicants. Programming
involves so much math and physics that the school
accepts only students with at least a 3.0 grade-point
average in high-school math and science. They must
supply two letters of recommendation and, if they fall
short academically, take an entrance exam and clear
an interview with faculty members, who subject the
would-be game designers to pop questions. "I ask them
something like, 'What is the cosine of zero degrees?'
" says James Chu, the school's registrar. "If there
is any hesitation, they are out."
Occasionally, DigiPen bends the rules. A few years ago, for
instance, DigiPen officials told a Florida applicant named
Patrick Meehan, who had been schooled at home, that his
education was inadequate. "He drove all the way from his
home in Orlando to Vancouver to take our test," Mr. Chu says.
"He passed, and he turned out to be one of our best students."
Mr. Meehan, like most of the students, says he was willing
to jump through hoops for one simple reason: DigiPen students
are highly sought out for programming jobs; the school has
a 95% placement rate. Upon his graduation from the two-year
associate of science program in 1996, Mr. Meehan says he was
hired by Nintendo and recently was recruited away by a small
game maker. A fellow graduate, Jonathan Johnson, says five
companies were waiting for him when he got out last year.
"I still get e-mails to this day from the others," says
Mr. Johnson, who also joined Nintendo, where salaries
for recent DigiPen graduates run as high as $50,000.
Indeed, this is DigiPen's biggest lure -- and curse. The
software industry is growing so fast that most companies
can't hire people fast enough. "Every developer would add
another project team if they could,"" says Jim Merrick, a
Nintendo software manager here.
But with DigiPen's unique focus on game programming, many
companies are not waiting until graduation. Last fall, a
dozen of the 40 Vancouver students were snatched away by
other software companies after just three semesters of
schooling. "That's why I came," says Randy Colley, 21, of
Grantsville, Utah. |
