A Tour of Bond University

Feature from Yug - Thursday, 16 October 2008 @ 12:27am

I never went to university.

True story. I finished high school and moved to Sydney with the intention of finding fame and fortune. Needless to say, I moved back to Brisbane a year later after having learnt some very important life lessons the hard way.

Now I’m not personally advocating a tertiary education one way or the other – I hardly think I’m the leading authority on such issues. However, when it comes to the gaming industry in Australia, the general consensus from ALL the developers I’ve visited over the last 3 years is that if you want to get into the industry, you have to at least have the piece of paper that proves you have the skillz.

So it is with great personal interest that I’ve decided to slowly but surely visit the tertiary education facilities around Australia that offer specific video game courses, to hopefully give the budding future game developers out there an idea of what’s on offer.

Kicking things off I decided to take a trip to Bond University in Queensland, partly because my sister currently studies there and she had some DVDs of mine I wanted back, partly because it’s an awesome drive from Brisbane to the Gold Coast in a convertible, but mostly because I was so enamored by Jeffrey Brand (Associate Professor of Communication Media at Bond University and temporary Head of School) at SupaNova earlier this year and wanted and excuse to interview him.

Arriving on campus in the middle of the day, I actually felt smarter just by being there. Its massive open courtyard area leads towards a huge archway, and extends out into a lake area. The sandstone and marble buildings give off a nice solid ‘established’ aura, but without the oppressive aspect that I usually associate with tertiary campuses.

Yug goes back to school

It's so symmetrical!

I met up with Jeff who took me for a bite to eat as we discussed everything from Grand Theft Auto IV to the problems with the laboratory trials conducted internationally linking games and violence ... but more on that later.

Bond University offers a Bachelor of Computer Games, a 2 year full-time course with a focus on equipping students with the knowledge they need to potentially step into careers in any area of the computer games industry. We’re not just talking about your typical game design and programming, but also public relations, games journalism, business principals, distribution, etc.

The degree can be combined with others in order to specialise in one or more of the technical areas, but it’s the Computer Games course itself that fascinates me.

Jeff himself teaches classes on the games industry – prepping students on every aspect of the national and international communities and businesses. It’s the kind of specific course I wish I could have done 3 years ago before I started AustralianGamer, as it focuses as much on the business side of the games industry as much as the production aspect.

I also got a chance to speak to Scott Knight (Assistant Professor of Film, Television & Media and Head of Computer Games), who teaches things like the history of games, the influence in modern society and analysing past games and genres in order to learn from their mistakes and successes. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have expected a Computer Game course to teach, but makes perfect sense. Not everyone will have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the last two decades of games, and studying the history of the field gives students the ability to learn and respect the fundamental elements of game design and development and how they’ve affected society today.

If my basic layman’s descriptions of the courses aren’t enough, be sure to check out the Bond website where they have full details and course descriptions on the course.

Perhaps the most impressive part of my entire trip though was seeing the facilities provided to students, including the recently build Multimedia Learning Centre and its surrounding rooms. Like a cyber cafe from the future, featuring slick space like tables and chairs with high speed computers setup, there were also multiple booths all featuring plasma screens, laptop connections, Playstation3’s and high definition mounted camera.

Multimedia Learning Centre / Gaming Lan Cafe ?

You just can't have space age without neon glowing purple lights

The surrounding rooms featured large projectors and plasma TV’s featuring all the latest consoles and multimedia capabilities, video conferencing facilities and Bose surround sound.

When I walked past I peaked in to see students playing multiplayer Halo 3, while others were playing GTA IV back in the booths. Jeff is quick to point out that he believes that a successful university lets its students play games, just as successful developers do as well. Really, what better way to learn!

The final room I visited was the Level Up lab, an area that actually FEELS like a gamers lounge room! Featuring a back catalogue of games from the SNES to the most current generation, and a blackboard wall encouraging students to chalk up their thoughts and ideas, as well as a selection of very high end computers used for rendering and 3d design.

Learning materials

Blackboards > Whiteboards

Overall I was extremely impressed with the setup and professional ‘real world’ approach bond was taking to their Computer Games course and facilities. I personally think their focus on giving students all the skills they would need, as opposed to focusing on just the one aspect, is a very effective way to prepare them for work in real game developers – who usually require staff with the ability to shift from one skill set to another similar one.

One thing is for certain though – Bond has definitely set the bar high for the other tertiary educations that I’ll visit in the coming months.