E3 is just around the corner, although if you’re reading this article in the first place, I hardly need to tell you that, do I? This time of the year, it’s a mundane piece of information, almost akin to saying “Well, it’s another hot day,” or “RockStar plan to release another installment of the Grand Theft Auto series.” The thing is, that little nugget is directly relevant to what I’m talking about today.

E3 (aka the Electronics Entertainment Exposition) is kind of the Mecca of the hobby we call “gaming.” The biggest news in the industry routinely finds the light of day there, and most serious gamers are either there, plotting a way to be there, or enviously wishing they could be there. The problem is, E3 is a trade event, which is kind of a fancy way of saying “If you don’t work in the industry somehow, you can’t go.” That means, effectively, there are four ways in: An Exhibitor pass is for folks who work for the company in question – Sony, say – and are actively demonstrating and displaying product on the show floor. An Attendee pass is available for people who work in the industry but aren’t working at the show, per se. You still have to work in an approved capacity; being a janitor for Sony probably isn’t going to be enough. If you work at a game store, however, that can get you in. There are both paid and free registrations available as an attendee, but that’s really not relevant today. You can attend as a guest of one of the exhibitors, assuming you’re buddy-buddy with somebody at Microsoft, or Sony, or Midway, or whoever. Finally, you can attend as a member of the press, whether that’s print, radio, TV, or digital (i.e. websites).

So that’s it. Those are your avenues into the show each year, and given that most of you probably aren’t rubbing shoulders with the various game companies in the industry, that leaves two options: finagle your way into becoming a member of the press, or find a job in the industry somewhere. The latter is what I’ll be discussing today.

First, a little bit of perspective: Gaming as a hobby is approaching its 30th birthday, dating back to the early days of the Colecovision, Intellivision, and the console that arguably got the ball rolling in a big way, the Atari 2600. As a business, however, gaming is still very much in its infancy. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. If you go back even ten, fifteen years, most of the folks producing the games we’ve come to know and love had a more general focus in their knowledge bases. Most universities didn’t have a specific degree program for “game creation,” even as Nintendo was reviving the industry almost single-handedly, and the robust regrowth was attracting the attention of corporate heavyweights such as NEC, Sony, and Microsoft. Make no mistake, these companies all saw the potential in the industry, but it was very much an example of the blind leading the blind. People with programming experience (but not necessarily game design experience) were the ones on the bleeding edge of technology, and the results were understandably hit or miss.

Today, the world of gaming – and particularly console gaming - is not only a rapidly expanding business, but the sheer volumes of money at stake are absolutely staggering compared to even just 20 years ago. Again, some perspective: In 1980, before Nintendo had established itself as a presence in the North American market, but after the debut of the Atari 2600, Atari reported gross revenue of $415 million in combined hardware and software sales. Fast-forward to just a week or two ago, when Electronic Arts announced their 4th quarter earnings for 2003: $463 million in gross revenue. Remarkably, those earnings were lower than anticipated, and they also expect future earnings to be in the range of nearly $3 billion per year moving forward. That dwarfs Atari’s 1980 fiscal year, and we haven’t even taken a look at what annual game hardware sales amount to these days. Needless to say, business has boomed.

Now, granted, they’re just one player in the industry, and many publishers/developers can’t hope to match that sort of fiscal success, but that does serve as an interesting example of how the dynamics of the industry have changed in the last three decades. As gaming has become more and more a mainstream topic, the cost of doing business has gone up, while the expanding market has also meant an increase in sales and revenues.

What does all of that mean? Primarily, that practically every game developer on the market is looking for that next mega-hit title, that 10 million seller that can establish them as a major player the way Grand Theft Auto III did for Take-Two and RockStar. What that means is that these developers are constantly looking to attract top talent. Sometimes that means hiring away talent from the competition, but more frequently it means trying to spot the rising stars of game design before your competition does.

In the past, that’s been problematic; law firms can easily identify the sort of people who’d want to work for them: it’s the bunch of sharks coming out of law school. Still, until recent years, that hasn’t been the case in the game industry. Things are starting to change, however. Nintendo identified this exact problem a number of years ago, and established an entire university in Seattle devoted to game design. You might have heard of it, it’s called DigiPen. Or, more specifically, the DigiPen Institute of Technology. Other programs focusing on the various aspects of game design have sprung up around the country since, including a degree focus at the University of Southern California, and the Expression College for Digital Arts, located in Emeryville, CA (just outside of San Francisco, one of the current hot spots in the game design world).

Expression has three Bachelor’s programs available: Sound Arts, Digital Visual Media (which encompasses animation, 3D modeling, and more generic visual effects), and Digital Graphic Design. One of the things that sets Expression apart from more traditional settings is that one can attain a bachelor’s degree in just 2 ½ years, as opposed to the four years required at, say, USC. In an industry that’s constantly evolving, that’s one way to get in on ground zero that much sooner.

It’s worth noting that the various degree programs do have multiple practical applications. Graduating from Expression’s Sound Arts program is helpful for video game sound effects, but you’ll also gain hands-on experience with, for example, helping to cut a music CD It’s tempting, in other words, to view this (and programs like it) as devoted exclusively to game work, but that would be misleading. That same Sound Arts program includes courses wherein students will learn, for example, how to program an automated response tree. Ever sat on hold for an hour listening to elevator music and prerecorded voices? There you go.

I don’t mean that as a discouragement, only an admonishment to keep your eyes fully open no matter which program you look at. The glamour of creating your own games is tempting, to be sure, but there’s a lot of grunt work that goes on behind the scenes before you get to that point. Fortunately, each class runs for 5 weeks, and the bachelor’s program as a whole runs for about 30 months, so that likely alleviates much of the potential tedium.

The upshot is, you don’t necessarily have to have your heart set on game programming in order to benefit from an education there, but it certainly helps: an associate’s degree from Expression will cost you around $32,000. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree ranges between $43,000 and $49,000, in addition to the $95 application fee. That’s on par, incidentally, with the costs at DigiPen and USC. Applied degrees like these don’t come cheap, but the sort of jobs one can acquire with that degree as a background certainly pay a heck of a lot better than flipping burgers or working at that game store all summer.

So now you know what’s out there. The next question, undoubtedly, is “what sort of a background do I need to be successful in these programs?” The answer, typically, is that there is no one cookie-cutter background from which to cut. Certain disciplines will be more useful depending upon which area you intend to focus, but a foundation in the three R’s – reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic – is always a good start. Aspiring animators will find an art background useful, clearly, while those who are doing the actual coding will find that the more math they’ve taken, the more they’re going to feel at home. Now, that doesn’t mean you should neglect a particular aspect just because you don’t think it will be “useful” – Expression, for example, requires prospective admissions to pass the Wonderlic test, which judges a candidate’s language and mathematical abilities. That’s the same test, if I’m not mistaken, that NFL prospects take prior to the draft each season.

At any rate, there you have it. Just as there are a variety of ways to get into E3, there are also a variety of ways into each of those routes, particularly in game design. It’s a growing field, and with the sheer amounts of money involved on a yearly basis, it’s only going to grow larger. If such a career sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to look into Expression, DigiPen, USC, and the various nascent game arts programs around the country. Perhaps in five years’ time, you’ll be showing off your new game at E3…and we’ll be interviewing you about it.