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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Peter Raad

Aired June 08, 2003 - 09:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: As you probably remember, if you are at all a fan of video games, in the very beginning there was Pong, that was in 1977. And, playing on your TV was revolutionary. Well, Pong was the birthplace of what has become a $10 billion video game industry, and today college students can actually major in fun and games. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is now offering a degree program in video game making. Peter Raad joins us this morning from Dallas to tell us all about it.
Peter, hello to you, thanks for being here this morning.

PETER RAAD, SMU: Hello. Hello, Heidi, good morning.

COLLINS: So, how did you come up with an idea for this kind of a degree program?

RAAD: This idea, she came to us from the industry itself. We are in a somewhat of a unique position at SMU, we have the Linda and Mitch Hart eCenter which was chartered to innovate at the intersection of traditional disciplines, and we had seen how interactive network technology has changed the way we live, we work, we learn and obviously, also, how we play, and so, when we -- when we had the industry come to us last August and say, we need an educational program to train and educate individuals to become game developers, we just jumped on the opportunity. It was a fantastic opportunity for us.

COLLINS: So, are people taking it seriously, then?

RAAD: Absolutely. This is -- making video games is not all fun and games, it's actually very serious business. It takes -- we've decided to focus on three of the main disciplines in the industry. Those are: art creation, level design, and software development and the curriculum that we've built, basically from the ground up, with complete collaboration from the industry -- they're driving the curriculum. What we do is, basically, we empower it from academia. It's very, very serious. It takes 18 months to finish the program, it's a certificate program, it's at the graduate level, and it's extremely serious.

COLLINS: At the graduate level?

RAAD: Yes. We expect students to come with an undergraduate preparation. We felt given the intensity of the program, 18 months, six quarters back-to-back, students have to come in with some maturity in order to be able to handle that, they need to work in teams. When they graduate, they will graduate with a portfolio of games, so they will be able to not only say -- I know how to do this, but then be able to demonstrate how to do it by the portfolio of games they have built in teams.

COLLINS: Peter, at a time when college kids, I'm sure, are really having a tough time, at least some of them, trying to find jobs coming out of college, is this the sort of degree, then, that a lot of them might be flocking to because the idea for it is actually coming from the industry?

RAAD: Yes, we believe so. This is -- the industry, we found out, is about 30,000 strong in the United States and is growing between 10 percent and 20 percent a year, so we anticipate about 5,000 new openings per year, so the -- we're focusing -- we're not going to take any more than 100, as a matter of fact we're starting with only 32 students on July the 7th, and so we expect that our graduates are not going to have a hard time finding jobs in the industry. And if -- even if they don't choose to work in the video game industry, this is a field that enables them to work in simulation, advertising is picking up on the notion that games attract people. Obviously, we know that military uses simulation, flight simulators and others things -- war games and so, scientists have been using simulation for a long time. So, we anticipate that it's a very valuable program.

COLLINS: All right, something interesting to think about, that is for sure. Peter Raad, coming to us from Dallas this morning at SMU, thanks so much.

RAAD: Thank you very much, Heidi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired June 8, 2003 - 09:24   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: As you probably remember, if you are at all a fan of video games, in the very beginning there was Pong, that was in 1977. And, playing on your TV was revolutionary. Well, Pong was the birthplace of what has become a $10 billion video game industry, and today college students can actually major in fun and games. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is now offering a degree program in video game making. Peter Raad joins us this morning from Dallas to tell us all about it.
Peter, hello to you, thanks for being here this morning.

PETER RAAD, SMU: Hello. Hello, Heidi, good morning.

COLLINS: So, how did you come up with an idea for this kind of a degree program?

RAAD: This idea, she came to us from the industry itself. We are in a somewhat of a unique position at SMU, we have the Linda and Mitch Hart eCenter which was chartered to innovate at the intersection of traditional disciplines, and we had seen how interactive network technology has changed the way we live, we work, we learn and obviously, also, how we play, and so, when we -- when we had the industry come to us last August and say, we need an educational program to train and educate individuals to become game developers, we just jumped on the opportunity. It was a fantastic opportunity for us.

COLLINS: So, are people taking it seriously, then?

RAAD: Absolutely. This is -- making video games is not all fun and games, it's actually very serious business. It takes -- we've decided to focus on three of the main disciplines in the industry. Those are: art creation, level design, and software development and the curriculum that we've built, basically from the ground up, with complete collaboration from the industry -- they're driving the curriculum. What we do is, basically, we empower it from academia. It's very, very serious. It takes 18 months to finish the program, it's a certificate program, it's at the graduate level, and it's extremely serious.

COLLINS: At the graduate level?

RAAD: Yes. We expect students to come with an undergraduate preparation. We felt given the intensity of the program, 18 months, six quarters back-to-back, students have to come in with some maturity in order to be able to handle that, they need to work in teams. When they graduate, they will graduate with a portfolio of games, so they will be able to not only say -- I know how to do this, but then be able to demonstrate how to do it by the portfolio of games they have built in teams.

COLLINS: Peter, at a time when college kids, I'm sure, are really having a tough time, at least some of them, trying to find jobs coming out of college, is this the sort of degree, then, that a lot of them might be flocking to because the idea for it is actually coming from the industry?

RAAD: Yes, we believe so. This is -- the industry, we found out, is about 30,000 strong in the United States and is growing between 10 percent and 20 percent a year, so we anticipate about 5,000 new openings per year, so the -- we're focusing -- we're not going to take any more than 100, as a matter of fact we're starting with only 32 students on July the 7th, and so we expect that our graduates are not going to have a hard time finding jobs in the industry. And if -- even if they don't choose to work in the video game industry, this is a field that enables them to work in simulation, advertising is picking up on the notion that games attract people. Obviously, we know that military uses simulation, flight simulators and others things -- war games and so, scientists have been using simulation for a long time. So, we anticipate that it's a very valuable program.

COLLINS: All right, something interesting to think about, that is for sure. Peter Raad, coming to us from Dallas this morning at SMU, thanks so much.

RAAD: Thank you very much, Heidi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com