Kristin McWharter

A class to develop games and immersive media experiences that reflect your creative voice. Over 15 weeks, 'Intro to Games and Immersive Media' introduces a broad range of analog and digital game design techniques spanning from table top to virtual reality games. This course introduces students to game-making as a form of artistic practice, teaching foundational techniques and tools to develop analog and digital games that reflect their own creative voice and vision. No previous game-making skills are required, but students with an interest in games, or augmented and virtual reality technologies, will be guided through aesthetic and technical foundations in various aspects of game design and immersive media.
By the end of the semester, students will have created complete games or immersive media artworks ready to present in their portfolio.
Readings and screenings will vary but typically include Mary Flanagan, Eric
Zimmerman and Katie Salen Tekinbas.
Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, a mid-term, and a group final project. Students can expect to complete several exercises that explore a number of gaming media including working with game engines such as Unity or Unreal, character development and animation and motion capture. Students will complete a final culminating project in the form of a game or immersive media artwork.

As we adapt to the evolving demands of our politics and environment, we are often asked to prepare for a 'New Reality'. How are 'New Realities' imagined and formed? How can the act of imagining become a tool of creation?, This course will technically and conceptually explore what it means to create and simulate ?new realities? within game engines. As XR (extended reality) technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality devices have become untethered, video game entertainment has become as ubiquitous as film, and user familiarity with the rhetoric of virtual worlds has become more common, this course will expose students to the many modalities in which game engines can be used to produce artwork.

Exploring histories of artists using digital media and simulation to produce interactive and highly immersive experiences, this course offers students technical guidance in creating artistic output from game engine tools, while learning from artist practices of that range from games, animation, simulation, to machinima (cinematic film captured from game engine worlds). With an emphasis on how interactive 3D worlds interact with our increasingly online and virtual routines, students will build projects that explore themes of participation, movement, behavior and world building to investigate our perceptions of ?reality?. The collected group of individuals in this class will act as an experimental lab of participants, collectively and individually pushing the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. Primarily working with the software Unity, this course will include technical demos, readings, and investigations into the histories of immersive media, machinima, and play as an artistic medium. Previous experience working with Unity recommended but not required.

Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, a mid term project, a final project as well as in class demos and workshops. Students may work collaboratively on these projects if they choose.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.