IN MOTION (backup) V.3 - USC School of Cinematic Arts - University ...

Game On!
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The EA Interactive Entertainment Program, which is a track
in the three-year Master of Fine Arts degree, supports new
courses to help students become proficient in scriptwriting,
as well as visual and audio effects, which are then used to
create compelling interactive experiences with cinematic
qualities for a variety of game playing populations.
An integral part of the interactive entertainment program is
the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab, based in the
Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts. This state-of-the-art facility
serves as a research space and think tank where new concepts
in game design, play, and usability are developed,
prototyped and play-tested. The room is equipped with an
array of technologies, from PCs sporting high-end graphics
cards, to a usability room set up with one-way mirrors and
video cameras that allow researchers and developers to monitor
how players interact with various games. Students, faculty,
and visiting scholars in the lab are investigating a broad
range of subjects, such as scalable networked virtual environments,
multi-platform gaming environments, and ubiquitous
gaming. Through their work, lab users are pushing
games beyond their currently defined genres, markets, and
play patterns, creating a body of knowledge about players,
games, and game playing that provides a launching pad for
the next generation of software and hardware.
Beyond the lab, EA support is aiding in the formation of an
intra-USC gaming community that brings together creative
and technical expertise in cinema-television, the arts, and
technical sciences, and provides students with invaluable
real-world experience through internships and work-study
programs at EA, including the company’s newest Los
Angeles studio.
Professor Perry Hoberman (left) helps student Todd Furmanski
program a BASIC stamp chip, which enables a computer to
read various types of sensors (light, motion, etc.).
The EA Endowed Faculty Chair — which brings some of
the gaming industry’s top talent to teach at USC — elevates
the field into the ranks of other professions, such as law and
medicine, and draws the top student candidates from home
and abroad to learn one-on-one from these masters. The EA
chair is one of six newly created endowed positions that the
School installed this fall. Together they join an impressive
roster of funded seats at the School, including the Alma and
Alfred Hitchcock Endowed Chair, the Mary Pickford
Professorship, the Steven J. Ross/Time Warner Dean’s Chair,
the Fran and Ray Stark Endowed Chair, and the Hugh M.
Hefner Chair.
Playing It Smart
Interview with Scott Fisher, chair
of the Division of Interactive Media
Arriving at the School in 2002, Scott Fisher brings a wealth of experience as a media artist and interaction
designer whose work focuses primarily on interactive environments and technologies of presence.
Well known for his pioneering work in the field of Virtual Reality at NASA, Fisher’s media industry
experience includes Atari, Paramount, and his own companies Telepresence Research and Telepresence
Media. Fisher is a graduate of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group (now Media Lab); has taught at MIT,
UCLA and UCSD; and served as project professor and director of the Environmental Media Project for
Keio University at Shonan Fujisawa, Japan.
Scott Fisher
Q: What is the importance of interactive media, or, put more directly, why should
people take this division seriously?
Fisher: The short response to that question is that interactive entertainment is most likely going to be the
dominant form of entertainment in the 21st century. The most common example is what’s happening with
the video game industry where the revenues from that are now competing with film box office revenues.
That said, in the longer term there are a couple different aspects in terms of where we are in development.
The technologies that are the underpinnings of interactive media, of interactive entertainment, are now
coming to the point where they can easily compete with other home consumer devices. PlayStation, for
example, at $149, is approaching the quality of graphics machines that five or six years ago we were paying
a couple hundred thousand dollars for. Those kinds of developments are really crucial. Perhaps more important,
beyond the technology availability and cost effectiveness is the type of experience people have become
used to. People are accustomed to using the Web, using a lot interactivity in their day-to-day activities, and
we see students coming in expecting to have much more access and availability of interactive coursework.
We in the division believe that this will only grow, and that this process will evolve into a very major new
set of media to provide interactive experiences.
Q: Where do you see the division in terms of defining how we learn, teach, and collaborate
with one another?
Fisher: Even though we call the mission of the division interactive entertainment, a huge area of interest
and importance for us is in educational applications in all of the different media that I have been talking
about, but particularly games. We see that crossing over very quickly and very effectively. For example,
a few months ago I went to a seminar around E3, which is the largest game convention in the world.
This workshop was specifically focused on using games for education. Representatives from all the
major universities were present and witnessed demonstrations of crossovers, of using game scenarios for
educational applications.
Q: What are the plans for expanding the reach of the program?
Fisher: We have a minor in game design in collaboration with the Viterbi School of Engineering, and
because of that we’re looking at undergraduate numbers growing substantially in our undergraduate game
design and interactive media introduction classes. Depending on how that goes, we would very much like
to grow this into an undergraduate program in addition to the MFA program.
Q: Interactive media studies programs are cropping up around the nation. Why
should prospective students choose USC over some other place?
Fisher: It’s true, there are plenty of other game programs out there. There are vocational schools, there are
schools like Carnegie Mellon, the University of Washington, and Stanford, but I think the particular mix of
things we have to offer is just unbeatable. Carnegie Mellon has a two-year program, but it’s much more oriented
around the technology and tool-building end of things. We’re focused much more on the storytelling
and experience-design aspect of it. And that’s really the key thing that’s going to make any new technology
work in the public’s eye — it’s not the technology itself, it’s what you do with it. We also have a mix of
backgrounds applying. We have computer science students, we have a lot of design students, we have
artists, we have philosophers. It’s a very good mix that I think is critical to make something like this work,
because eventually the teams that these guys will end up putting together will mirror that same mix.
fall 2004 in motion | 11