How USC Games is building game maker ecosystems around the world

The 2022 USC Games Expo featured more than 50 student games, offering players diverse journeys ranging from a world where musical abilities are employed, to fight ghosts, to a rescue mission on enigmatic floating islands and an exploration expedition to defeat the terrifying Anxiety Monster.

On May 12, 2022, the 6th annual USC Games Expo took place, with game developer Jam City returning as a sponsor and media site IGN coming onboard as an official partner.

USC Games is a joint collaboration programme between the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science and the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media & Games Division, which has been ranked as the top games education programme in the country by the Princeton Review for over 11 years.

In conversation with Adgully, Danny Bilson, Chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ (SCA) Interactive Media & Games Division (IMGD) and Director of USC Games, spoke about the gaming industry, the Expo, future of gaming and Game development courses.

What is the USC Expo all about?

USC Games is a flagship collaboration offered jointly by the School of Cinematic Arts Division of Interactive Media & Games and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Computer Science Department. In partnership with Jam City, USC Games hosted the 6th annual USC Games Expo, which featured up-and-coming game designers and developers from USC Games’ program. It is the largest University-sponsored gaming and esports event in the world. As it has historically, USC Games Expo showcased the students’ skills and efforts in game development while featuring the first hands-on for the 8 projects developed in USC Games’ course - Advanced Games Program (AGP), as well as featured over 50 games made entirely via distributed development by students and teams spread around the globe. The virtual event was concurrently streamed by its official media partner – IGN.

What prompted USC to create dedicated Games programs?

Nearly 20 years ago, one of the founders of the program and an expert game designer, Tracy Fullerton, wanted to both formalise game design education and also build a best-in-class Game Design program. Over time, we partnered with our logical complementary discipline, engineering, making us the unique program that we are today, merging the best of both worlds – storytelling and technology.

Looking at the new phase of gaming like the Metaverse and AI, how is USC carrying them on board to its Games programs?

We have projects that we are working on that aren’t ready for public announcement, but we are watching these spaces (Metaverse/ AI/ Crypto) and laying out a curriculum that will prepare our students for the future of game development.

From your perspective, what will the Gaming sector look like in the coming times?

Diverse! There will be an increasing focus on the diversity of the workforce, as well as an increase in the diversity in the types of games that are made and played. Now that people can almost have personalised gaming experiences, we believe we will see games that cater to a wide variety of tastes, which means more variety and opportunity for our designers, developers, and engineers.

The gaming industry has gained worldwide popularity. What are your thoughts on educating talents worldwide for the industry in areas like program course designs and practical training?

We regularly collaborate with companies and regional governments around the world. If there’s a desire to invest in educating and training game designers and starting up a healthy game development ecosystem, we are the ones to call as we are working with partners who have envisioned the same goal. We want to help them achieve it and build game maker ecosystems around the world.