Games

Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program

The Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program and Game Innovation lab are the focal point of games study and research within the Interactive Media Division. With the establishment of the first Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment at the School of Cinema-Television, the division has become a leader in the emerging field of game studies.

The games programs in the Interactive Media Division build on the strong foundation of the School of Cinema-Television, stressing creativity of expression, innovation, experimentation and excellence in execution, with the goal of preparing students for careers in interactive entertainment, specifically the video games industry. Students explore new concepts in game design as well as mastering industry-standard tools and production techniques.

Stress is placed on practicing an iterative process of design, prototyping and playtesting with the integration of player feedback at the heart of the process. This "play-centric" process allows student game designers to take risks with their ideas and to learn from their experiments. A white paper detailing the philosophy of "play-centric" game design is available here (~2M PDF).

Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab

The USC Game Innovation Lab is a research space and think tank where new concepts in game design, play, and usability can be developed, prototyped and play tested in an environment separate from the timelines and constraints of commercial game development. The goal of the lab is to nurture concepts that push games beyond their currently defined genres, markets and play patterns and to make breakthroughs in these areas that will be valuable to lab sponsors and the industry on the whole.

Lab research includes studies of both commercial products and internally developed games with a goal of creating a body of knowledge about players, the games they play, and how they play them and using that knowledge to design games that exhibit new and better play mechanics, create satisfying new social interactions, and take advantage of innovative technologies.

Strong ties to the industry and key developers help ensure that lab research centers on areas of innovation that commercial game designers are unable to address because of nature of their product schedules and the allocation of company resources. Ideas are incubated through extensive iteration, play testing, and user feedback.

While there are many areas of game design the members of the lab community are pursuing, the top-level initiatives of the lab focus on the following areas of investigation:

• Game innovation initiative
• Prototyping and playtesting research
• Interdisciplinary outreach
• Social play research
• Narrative play research
• Serious play research
• Experimental genres research

Current Projects

Click here to see current game projects in the Interactive Media Division.

Facilities

The Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab is administered by the Interactive Media Division of the School of Cinema-Television. The lab is housed at the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, a 35,000 square foot facility, which represents the country's first and only fully digital training center. Made possible by the generous support of Electronic Arts, the lab is dedicated to the advancement of games and interactive entertainment.

Contact Information

Lab Directors: Tracy Fullerton & Chris Swain
Division Chair: Scott S. Fisher
Program Coordinator: Jennifer Stein
Program Office: LUC 310, x12515