Fall 2019

Dr. Kevin Moberly is the Associate
Professor spearheading the new Game
Studies & Design (B.S.) degree here at
ODU.
Mace & Crown staff writer Tyler Eddins
sat down with Dr. Moberly to discuss the
ins and outs of the new program. Below
is a portion of their conversation.
What’s your background in
gaming?
Dr. Moberly: I’ve always been interested
in gaming. My brother and I grew up in
Portsmouth… I remember we went to
a mall in Newport News, we were very
young and saw our first video arcade. We
immediately on the way home were like
‘How can we make one of these things?’
So, we were thinking like strings and like
screws and all the things to make Pac-
Man move around. So, I’ve always been
sort of interested in games… I’ve always
been interested in how games draw people
in, how they construct experiences,
how they reward people, how they punish
people all of that kind of stuff.
What are some of your favorite
games?
Dr. Moberly: Some of my favorite games
are ‘Borderlands 2’, ‘Portal’. Some early
games, ‘Star Flight’, ‘Star Flight 2’. The
genre of games I really like are games
like ‘Oblivion’, ‘Skyrim’, ‘The Witcher’,
these medieval themed roleplaying
games… The types of games I like are
these just kind of enormous epic things
where you as a character go into these
worlds and you feel like your completely
overwhelmed and then you little by little
unlock the world and unlock the puzzles
and things like that. I also do really like
casual games just for how they can put
a lot of gameplay in five-minute sessions.
I’m always looking at games.
This Game Studies and Design
degree that you’re bringing to
the school, was there something
similar in place or is this new to
the university?
Dr. Moberly: This is new to the university,
but this is the second attempt. I’ve
been working for five years to get this
started. It grew out of the Video Game
Design and Development Club. I’ve
been teaching for the past five or six
years a class called Gaming and Rhetoric.
I’ve always advertised the class
to a wide swath of students and I had
some students in the first or second
year I taught it say ‘We came here and
we would like a major’ and ‘How do
we start with a major?’, and things like
that. So, Avi Santo and I started an initiative
with a gaming company idea that
students at ODU would work for private
and public clients creating games
as a kind of internship and then they
would have something for their portfolios.
That one we did good work, but it
didn’t work out because of some issues
at the time. This is not me just doing
this program. It’s Andrew Kissel in Philosophy,
Marc Ouellette in English and
Virginia Tucker in IDS.
You mentioned the Game and
Rhetoric Course, are there any
new courses in the program?
Dr. Moberly: All of the game courses
are new... GAME 201 introduces the
students to the 4 core areas. The
two explicit areas of the degree and
the two hidden, or Easter egg areas.
The two main ones are Design and
Development. Design being art,
levels, sound, story, that kind of thing.
Development being programming.
But there’s also a strong emphasis on
entrepreneurship because the gaming
industry is a creative industry, and
if you’re going to go into a creative
industry you need to have a portfolio.
“We want to produce
thoughtful, mindful game
designers.”
You need to know how to market
your ideas. You need to know how to
sell your ideas. You need to be able
to come up with innovative ideas and
recognize opportunities. The other
piece is the criticism piece.
We want to produce thoughtful,
mindful game designers. We want
to produce game designers who can
analyze games to say, not just what
looks good and what doesn’t, what’s
fun and what’s not fun, but also to
sort of come up with games that
reach broader audiences. Games that
are more politically conscious. Games
as art… We want are students to
distinguish themselves and to work
in the industry. But also, to say I have
this ability to think in new ways and
different ways. To see opportunities
where other people didn’t see
opportunities… Then we have GAME
240 which is a class that is all about
reading games and about the critical
angle of games. It’s about how to
evaluate games.
Fall 2019 | 38