Madeleine Coles

Life Editor

An experimental course in 3D video game development is being offered at ISU next semester.

Adjunct professor Kirk Young will be teaching the course in which students will design an interactive, virtual reality space.

Young spent over 20 years in the video game industry as an environment artist before becoming a professor. He is in his third year of teaching 3D modeling at ISU, and he added 3D animation to his course options a year and a half ago.

While both courses are still currently experimental, Young said they are being reviewed to become permanent.

The new course, which is dual listed under the art department as well as the communication, media and persuasion department is the first of its kind at ISU.

According to Young, students must have either taken his modeling or animation class, have experience in computer science and coding or have significant modeling experience.

“What students I get in the class will dictate what type of project we do,” he said.

In addition to the skillset of the students, time constraints may also limit the scale of the class creation.

Most games take several years and hundreds of people to come to life, so Young said he will count the class as a success to simply have an interesting space to be able to play with.

During the first week of the class, students will brainstorm and design the space they want to create and decide which preset interaction type they want their game to have, such as first person shooter. That will dictate which parts they need to model and create. Then, Young will assign students their part in creating the game, such as coding or designing. Finally, the students will add characters, lighting, special effects and all of the finishing touches to the game.

According to Young, he hopes to acquire a virtual reality headset that will allow a player to become fully immersed in the game.

He is also attempting to collaborate with Professor Zac Gershberg’s multiplatform storytelling class in order to more fully develop the story elements of the game.

“Games are made by three different disciplines: artists, programmers and designers. You really need all three working in concert, and that’s how I’m trying to model this class,” Young said, adding that “Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything.”

Even with the basis of a plan and a variety of students, Young said there are still some unknown variables the course will have to face.

“The end goal obviously is to have a fully realized space that we can interact with in some way, shape or form. We just don’t know exactly what form it will take yet,” Young said.

But he remains optimistic about the outcomes of the class, and the fact that the class is being started at all.

“It’s an experimental class,” he said. “We’re going to give it a go and try to blaze some new trails here at ISU.”

And, according to Young, their trail is headed in the right direction. Virtual reality is a growing industry with multiple possibilities.

“It has a lot of potential in so many different industries, such as education, retail, military and obviously entertainment,” Young said.

The video game industry in particular is moving forward into virtual and augmented reality.

For proof, one needs to look no further than the massive success of Pokemon Go!

The augmented reality game which allows participants to see and “catch” Pokemon wherever they go was especially a hit with college students, which is perhaps why so many are taking an interest in gaming and virtual reality.

“There’s definitely a demand for the courses I’ve been offering,” Young said.

But it’s not just students who are excited about the new course; Young himself said that this is “something that I’ve been wanting to do as a game artist,” and added that he has hopes of expanding this course of study in the future.

“I lived in the bay area of California for many years, and there’s a whole culture of startup and innovation. I want to do anything that we can do to help foster that kind of concept of changing the culture in Southeast Idaho so that our students can be innovators here,” Young said. “That is the key to growing our local economy and our students.”

This course can be found under the catalog listing CMP4499.