“It’s going to give our University a big advantage, taking the leap into this industry,” says Gary Chang, a UD art professor who will teach the program’s course on the art and design of games. “The students will actually be sharing and merging their knowledge from different perspectives, from the style and art to the computer science perspective, which gives them hands-on skills of programming.’’

UD’s new effort isn’t the first “gaming” degree in the country, but by all indications, it is among the most holistic and inclusive. While other universities focus more on technical aspects of game studies, UD is aiming to make it a major that embraces all abilities, tapping the potential of aspiring writers, artists, musicians and engineers alike.

“You don’t have to be a particular kind of student to benefit from this program,” says Rachael Hutchinson, a professor of Japanese studies who has done extensive research on game culture in Japan. “Whatever interests you have, we want to be able to build on those.”

“Those are things that you’ll seldom see included in other programs,” Penix-Tadsen says. “We have courses on diversity in gaming, sex/violence in the media, ethnic and cultural studies. We’re also one of the only programs that offers a concentration in eSports management.”

As students from across the interest spectrum gravitate toward the new major, so will UD’s professors, who are being enlisted from nine departments within three UD colleges. Building off UD’s existing minor in Game Studies, the program lets students choose from three primary pathways: Games, Culture and Society; Game Design and Development; Game Industry and eSport Management.

“For an interdisciplinary major to go across three colleges is pretty unique,” Hutchinson says.

Part of the major’s appeal lies in gaming technology’s increasing relevance to a variety of “nongaming” endeavors. More businesses are turning to gaming technologies to train employees and help shape workplace environments, and game-derived “virtual reality” technology is already helping patients in rehabilitation therapy.

Meanwhile, postgraduation opportunities abound in the Mid-Atlantic: Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters is in Washington, D.C.; there are dozens of independent game studios in Philadelphia and Baltimore; and major industry players like Bethesda Softworks and Rockstar Games are within a couple hours’ drive from Newark.

At UD, organizers hope to hire six or seven new professors for the major and aim to have internships in game-related industries in place within four years. A capstone seminar will allow students to work on individual and collaborative game-development projects. Strong student interest in UD’s existing game courses hints at future success for the program, and early momentum should be energized by more than a decade of interdisciplinary faculty scholarship that has already been done on game-related topics.

“It was a long time coming, but there was a lot of work done in previous years that led up to this,” Hutchinson says. “We had to put aside our academic differences and ask, ‘What does a student want to get out of this?’ We really tried to take away some of the obstacles that kept students out of the minor. We didn’t want people looking at it and thinking, ‘This major’s not for me.’”