Game design program opens doors.

AuthorMigneault, Jonathan
PositionTRAINING & EDUCATION

When Ryan Trudeau registered with Laurentian University he was in the mechanical engineering program. But that didn't last long.

His roommate was a computer science student and often showed Trudeau the projects from his programming courses.

Trudeau started to help his roommate with his projects and quickly caught the computer science bug.

"I found that it was a lot more rewarding immediately," Trudeau said. "You're working with a lot more logic systems."

While a lot of his engineering courses dealt solely with theory, in computer science he could immediately see the results of his work by creating functional computer programs.

Trudeau became known as the "web guy" due to his skill as a coder and interest in the backend systems that make the web an integral part of people's lives.

In 2014, when Trudeau was beginning his third year in Laurentian's computer science program, the department created two new specializations more senior students could choose from: game design and web data management.

Despite his interest in web design, Trudeau, who had been a lifelong gamer, opted for the game design specialization instead.

It turned out game design could open a number of doors beyond the massive video game industry.

The courses helped Trudeau learn about iterative development, where a programmer can add functionality to a base prototype.

Game design also emphasizes user experience, which applies to a number of areas in computing.

"Everything I've learned I can use no matter what I go into, whether it's database or web," Trudeau said.

It's that flexibility that convinced Laurentian master lecturer Aaron Langille it was time to launch a game design specialization at the university.

It also helped that game design had long been on many students' wish lists.

"When I visit the university fair one of the questions I get asked most often is, 'Do you offer game design?"' Langille said.

He guesses about two-thirds of his students got into computer science because of video games.

Many students go on to work in other areas of information technology, but it's often video games that spark that...

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