TEACHING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF VIDEO GAME DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Urban Game Academy is the educational division of Entertainment Arts Research one of the first African American owned 3D Video Game Company in the nation based in Atlanta, with creative component cells across the country, our collective collaboration is the brain child of Professor Joseph Saulter, Chairman of the Game Design and Development Department at American Intercontinental University, Professor Saulter is also the chair of the International Game Developers Associations Diversity Advisory Committee and Bill Blakesley President of Animated Health, SoftImage XSi 4.0 3D Developer, Greg Meier esq.

CEO of the NASA sponsored Classroom of the Future and Roderick Woodruff, CEO of African American Gamer. Our Game Academy is a advanced educational technological center featuring the latest software and hardware in the Game Development and Entertainment Industry production. We have found that the average Urban school students, of various nationalities White, African American, Latino and Asian spends and major portion of their spare time playing video games, listening to music or watching television. We have designed our technology center to reflect the opportunities in all of these areas. We listen to our students and find that projects that are not engaging and or challenging soon become boring.

We engage our students in the development of unique video games, music and multimedia productions. Students creating 3D characters animation, environments, music as well as marketing practices and legal service, all combined in a curriculum that is not difficulty to understand. Our research development in virtual game education and remote access enables students to rapidly develop the skills necessary to achieve educational fluidity as a part of a video game development team. We also have included a component of education that addresses the at-risk school student as well as the school dropout.

Mission and Objectives

The mission of the Urban Video Game Academy (UVGA) is to teach the fundamentals of video game design and development to school-age youth in "underserved" areas--that is, urban and close-in suburban locations in which the populations are primarily minority or low-income. Youth in these areas have few or no opportunities to study video game development due to a lack of technology and facilities in the area or due to a lack of income to take advantage of nearby facilities.