Game Design at Duke is More Than Meets the Eye

Growing up in Chile, most games did not come in Spanish.

Ernesto Escobar, executive director of Duke’s new Master of Engineering in Game Design, Development & Innovation, attributes learning English to playing video games and forcing himself to figure out what was going on.

“Games are immersive. In most circumstances, people will not spend hours on end working through something they feel lost in,” Escobar said. “With games, people push through until they’ve learned something or developed a skill that will move them forward.”

This experience led Escobar to view games as much more than just a leisurely activity; he sees games as powerful tools that are relevant to many disciplines across unexpected industries.

“This new master’s degree program is very exciting on numerous levels,” he said. “Our approach provides students with an applied, industry-focused education that enables them to immediately contribute to any organization while simultaneously preparing them for long-term career success.”

It’s this view that led to Escobar agreeing to lead the new master of engineering degree program.

Applications are now being accepted for fall admission.

Housed in an engineering school surrounded by excellent programs in liberal arts, law, policy, ethics and more, he sees an opportunity to build a unique program around game design that incorporates facets of the industry—and targets applications outside of the industry—that often get overlooked.

In Escobar, Duke Engineering sees a talented entrepreneur with the wide range of experience needed to build such a program from the ground up.

While working as an international programs manager for the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), his childhood experience of seeing how games could be used as a tool led him to leave that job and start his own company, FanaticusXR.

“I wasn’t necessarily leaving to develop games,” Escobar said. “I was trying to solve a problem in the entertainment industry, and the best solution was to use game technology.”

His initial work included making a virtual reality flying broom simulator to try to disrupt the theme park industry with new technology and new business models. More than 450 people tested his prototype with ages ranging from 3 to 63 years old. The pandemic, however, forced him to move from location-based entertainment to publishing games and creating products marketed directly to the consumer.

Games are the biggest industry in the entertainment sector and the fastest growing. More industries every day are realizing that games are a powerful tool to accomplish a wide variety of goals. The program is a two-year master of engineering that trains professionals to make big impacts in the game industry and beyond.

Duke’s game design, development and innovation (GDDI) courses will push the boundaries of computer engineering in the real-world context of electronic game design and development, said Jeff Glass, Hogg Family Director of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship—accelerating innovation in both the technology and the multidisciplinary context of game applications that include intersections with art, music and business.

The expanding applications of game technology in medical and industrial simulations also make this an excellent opportunity to have a significant societal impact, a fundamental goal for Duke Engineering.

This program is part of a growing portfolio of master’s degrees within Duke Engineering’s Institute for Enterprise Engineering. It couples Duke’s deep expertise in computer engineering education with its highly collaborative multidisciplinary campus culture.

“This program is very exciting on numerous levels,” Glass said. “Our approach provides students with an applied, industry-focused education that enables them to immediately contribute to any organization while simultaneously preparing them for long-term career success.”

Innovation is essential to the GDDI program, and it has been the common thread throughout Escobar’s career. “I think we can do some interesting things,” he said. “The game industry as a whole is always pushing the boundaries of what can be done.”

Many of these boundaries are already being pushed at Duke, such as opportunities to use gaming in the educational and medical fields. Escobar is also looking to connect with companies in the Research Triangle area to apply games to their industries.

Duke Engineering graduate Greg Maletic, Class of 1990, is director of special projects for Panic, Inc. and a Duke GDDI advisory board member. He agrees that there is broad applicability for game design.

“Our notions about ‘good design’ increasingly come from the expanding world of game design,” he said. “Techniques like onboarding, feedback mechanisms, rewards—even misdirection tricks that can magically hide technical limitations—can be put to use everywhere. And not just within the confines of an Xbox. For the good of users, for the good of design, we should want people trained in this rapidly advancing field to spread these innovations throughout the business world.”

Game development is extremely multidisciplinary, needing professionals with many different skills. The program will accept students from a wide range of majors and experiences and train them to be very highly proficient game programmers.

Housed in Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, the program is technical. Students will learn programming languages with a focus on C++. They will also learn design and business while participating in workshops that will expose them to many of the other disciplines involved in developing games such as art, music and narrative. There will also be many opportunities to collaborate with people across other programs and disciplines at Duke, giving students exposure to other skill sets and working styles.

Another exciting element of Duke GDDI is that throughout the program, students will work in teams to go through the full process of developing a game from ideation to publishing.

According to Escobar, many gaming design programs offer students the opportunity to build a demo or a full game and then showcase it, but that is the limit to how far they take it.

Duke’s GDDI master’s degree is unique because students will start working on their games early on. Assignments are woven across courses to produce games that go deeper. There is significant playtesting and feedback as well as debugging, and consideration of the business elements of the game industry.

“That last part of the process can be very painful and tedious, but it is a crucial part of what happens in the real world,” Escobar said. “A lot of programs out there don’t focus on the full picture, and that is something that we are going to do. Our graduates will not only be highly technically capable, they will also be well grounded, which will make them different.”

Game developers must possess hard skills such as programming, design, iteration and quality assurance testing, as well as soft skills including communication, empathy, collaboration and entrepreneurship, said 1999 Duke neuroscience graduate Catherine Croft, CEO of Catlilli Games and a Duke GDDI advisory board member.

“Our master’s program combines the strengths Duke holds in each of these areas to produce cohorts poised to bring meaningful change to the world through play.”