Leveling Up Our Game 

The film and music industries boasted some of their most commercially successful blockbusters in recent years, together raking in nearly $63 billion globally in 2023. Popular film franchises and timeless artists help propel these spaces to critical acclaim, but another, younger industry is making its own massive gains in the background. 

It might come as a surprise, but the gaming industry earned nearly $184 billion in 2023 alone and shows no signs of slowing down in relevance or reach. From Ms. Pac-Man and Pong to Fortnite and Halo, this not-so-quiet-anymore industry has been steadily amassing revenue outpacing the film and music industry. Despite the commercial success, games have often been stereotyped as child’s play with little to offer beyond its pixels. 

But don’t tell the growing professional industry behind video game design and development that.

More universities are offering programs tailored to students looking to study video games as well as building spaces for them to play and compete in the gaming arena competitively. Esports, as it’s known in professional gaming, has seen a rise in recent years due to the highly competitive online scene, with teams from the U.S. and across the globe vying for millions of dollars in tournament winnings. 

Academic researchers have been breaking down the social and cultural implications of digital representation in games. A video game series like Call of Duty can be scrutinized for its depictions of war, as well as others like Metal Gear Solid and Mass Effect that tackle themes of international espionage and free will. 

Video games have transformed in their presentation and delivery, and the technology bringing these images to life has only improved. 

Playing to Win, In Class

Though the utility of something like video games may seem confined to the 3D space where bragging rights are up for grabs, game design offers a deeper look at how the digital space reflects the world around us. Teachers and educators use the game space as a launching point for deeper conversations about the design process.  

Tools like the cross-platform engine Unity or the open source, interactive story creator Twine allow novice and expert game designers to engage with the development space more closely.  

And that has opened the door for academic programs especially.  

For instance, Duke University’s newest graduate program combines engineering and gaming to produce an immersive experience for students through a hands-on learning environment. “Our students are placed into small teams, or studios, for the entire program,” said Ernesto Escobar, executive director of the Game Design, Development & Innovation Master’s Program. “We’re very excited about that—they’ll be working as their own small studio to develop a game and make it ready for publication.” 

About 27 students will be joining the new program, making its launch one of the biggest at Duke Engineering. Escobar says this is the perfect opportunity to build relationships with other institutions in the region using video games to create bridges. “We’d love to plan game jams together with other programs in the state and also start thinking about ways to engage students earlier in their academic pursuits,” he shared. 

For Escobar, reaching students who are interested in the subject even before they consider graduate school or college is crucial for involving more diverse thinkers. A growing lack of resources across underserved communities makes connecting with those prospective students a challenge. 

“One of our plans for the future is to go to middle schools and high schools to engage with these students as early as possible,” he said. “That is the most important time to motivate and inspire and activate those students to go forward into technical careers and to maybe even consider graduate school.” 

Escobar also knows that for many, it’s all about risk. The industry has recently seen a string of layoffs and studio closures as companies adjust to economic strains. “Parents of students interested in gaming may also have a perception of this risk,” he said. “But there is a lot to be optimistic about in this space—there are a lot of different opportunities available in development and even in entrepreneurship.” 

Through the two-year graduate program, students will get to interact with AAA and independent studios as well as build a strong professional portfolio to be a competitive asset in the workforce. It’s a chance to engage with video games in a multidisciplinary capacity while collaborating in one of the country’s hotbeds for development. 

And that means taking gaming beyond a form of entertainment.

Duke Engineering is uniquely situated between a network of interdisciplinary resources, and Escobar hopes to tap into that same network to bring game design into different arenas. 

“We have very strong ties with the gaming industry in general, but we want to engage with other units at Duke,” he explained. “The medical field, for instance, is incredibly strong here, so getting to work closely with doctors, nurses, and physical therapists would present new opportunities.” 

A Different Kind of Reality

The virtual world isn’t entirely new to biomedical researchers at the university. Amanda Randles, the Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences, uses 3D printing in her classes alongside augmented reality and simulation to do virtual surgery. 

And they surprisingly achieve this in one of the more unlikely places: Unity.  

“Doing it on that platform is hugely important for students because there isn’t much they need to code,” Randles said. “They can go in, drop a shunt, perform the surgery virtually, and not have to worry about the complex aspects of the design.”  

Randles also teaches a parallel computing for biomedical simulation course that offers students the chance to focus on specific projects. 

“A large focus of our research is on making 3D patient-specific blood flow simulations,” she shared. “It involves fluid dynamic software through large scale parallel computing.”  

The conventional example in this case is, if someone has a narrowing lesion in their coronary artery, then doctors will need to decide whether a stent is needed using a guided wire that measures pressure. 

“In our work, we create 3D virtual models that can run blood flow simulations and virtually measure that pressure instead,” Randles explained.  

This “digital twin” makes it so that everything can be accomplished noninvasively, highlighting the power of a tool like Unity when applied to other professional industries. And Randles takes it further—the ability to customize the virtual space allows students to engage with any number of possible surgery scenarios. 

“If students are trying to assess what the right intervention is for a pediatric patient, which shunt should they pick?” she said. “In class, they can then modify the geometry to represent whatever surgery they need to try out and run the flow simulation, so that even before they ever step into the operating room, they can experiment with several different options and treatment plans.”  

This approach mimics a clinician’s interaction, allowing students to test different options virtually before they’re even in an operating room. 

Getting that crucial data back to doctors is how video game design aids in the visualization process, too. Randles says they work with petabytes of data—that’s one million times larger than a gigabyte. Advanced 3D modeling makes disseminating information more accessible, and the same tools that bring animated figures to life in the gaming world are also being used to relay massive amounts of information to medical professionals. 

For Randles, key collaborations help make these goals possible. “We work with the Argonne National Laboratory for visualization—students have worked directly with them to help us not only figure out the best tools to connect with but also improve those tools and build on them to create new ones,” she shared.  

“Randles says that these 3D tools can become trends that change quickly over time, but her focus is using surveys to understand how useful these resources actually are.  

“It’s not just a tool to show off when people come to the lab,” she explained. “What we’re really trying to understand is, when is it going to be useful for doctors or healthcare workers?”

What video game design and development offers goes well beyond entertainment. Graphics processing units, or GPUs, were made with games in mind at their inception, but researchers like Randles have taken advantage of their abilities to enhance even the medical space. “Even beyond GPUs, we’re going to make use of everything that’s been developed for gaming to improve computational modeling for health care,” she said. 

“I feel like it’s a natural shift in our area—we’re building on this powerful tool that also happens to come from video games.”