Students will discover and develop the entrepreneurial mindset that is critical to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment so that they will be able to imagine, create, identify, assess, and act on business opportunities in a variety of contexts and organizations. Through real-world examples and hand-ons activities, students will embrace an entrepreneurial and strength-based mindsets that will facilitate their understanding of the major functions of business and the relationships between them, as well as the importance of self-inquiry and teamwork.

Game History is an integrated, cross-disciplinary hands-on history class where students actively research the evolution and history of games through the lenses of design, art, technology, business, society and culture. Working with resources from the Game History Teaching Collection, and from the perspective of their discipline as a game developer, students will play, study and research historical to contemporary games. In this way, students will discover the nexus of relationships driving game development.

In the competitive and expanding game industry, it isn’t enough just to make a great game – you need to have a plan on how to bring it to your players. In this course students will explore the development of an interactive product from the development of a concept to product launch and beyond. Emphasis will be placed on the intersection of business and publishing with product development including market research, strategic partnerships, go to market plans, monetization, and more.

This is a fourth-year business course designed for Business and e-Business & Commerce majors; it is a capstone learning experience which should be taken in the student’s final semester. This course offers students an opportunity to participate in an intensive, hands-on management-level work experience in a business or not-for-profit setting that complements individual career aspirations. After finding an appropriate internship site, student interns will apply their business skills in a project-based context to help the organization address a problem or capitalize on an opportunity. In addition to the workplace projects, interns will research current information pertaining to their projects, conduct site analysis evaluations, analyze critical incidents, submit final written reports and present oral summaries to their peers. Upon completion of this course students should have gained valuable business experiences, acquired strong insights into an industry and an organization and made career-building contacts.

This course covers the basic microeconomic theories within a business context as they apply to markets, analysis of cost, producer and consumer behaviors, industrial organization, strategic thinking, and pricing strategies. These economic concepts will be continually applied to current events, policy issues, and business situations.

The college capstone in Game Development is an opportunity for students in the Game Studio to pursue a self-directed experience in a collaborative Game Development environment that intentionally integrates their liberal learning in the Core curriculum with their degree learning. Students spend the semester working in teams conceptualizing and building a proof of concept that they may choose to pitch to a faculty panel for selection for production in the second semester.

In EGD 420, Game Studio III, seniors successful in pitching their games during the college capstone in the Fall semester continue into full production. Forming large production teams, games are taken to the perfect polished state of gold master, ready for publication. Academic emphasis for the class is focused on working successfully in a professional studio environment, preparing for entrance into the job market, and taking personal craft to the next level.