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Ventura County College Offering New Program, Degree In Video Game Design

Moorpark College set to offer new degree program in video game design

Video games can be fun to play, and can sometimes be used for therapy or education. It’s turned into a $35 billion dollar a year industry in the U.S. Now, a Ventura County college wants to help students cash in on the boom, by offering a new college degree in video game design. The $35 billion dollar a year video game industry is creating new career opportunities.

A Ventura County college is riding that wave, expanding its existing video game classes into a degree program.  Tim Samoff is a video game industry veteran who’s taught at Moorpark College for the last few years, and is helping to spearhead the college’s new game design degree program.   Samoff currently has about two dozen students in one of Moorpark’s existing game design classes.

Game design is much more complex than you might think, because you have to be everything from a technical designer to a storyteller.  And, Samoff says video game ares also not just about play. They are increasing being used as teaching tools and for therapy.

The new degree program being offered this fall includes a series of general education, and multimedia courses, with a total of 34 to 37 units. They start with an introduction to game design to give people who are interested an overview, to more complex nuts and bolts classes. Moorpark College is adding more part time faculty to help with the new program, which begins this fall.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.