What started as a suggestion in 2015 led to SF State’s latest minor: Video Game Studies. The program offers classes ranging from Sound design for games, fantasy and fiction: exploring parallel worlds.
The process began seven years ago when Christopher Weinberger, the program’s founder and VGS coordinator, spoke with former Dean of Liberal and Creative Arts Paul Sherwin in 2013. But that was only for a single class.
Weinberger suggested a larger version of the interdisciplinary project to former LCA Dean Andrew Harris, who later approved the project and encouraged exploring more curriculum options in 2016.
Weinberger’s fascination with studying video games stemmed from its ability to deviate from conventional education. He said students can learn about video games by, for example, comparing and contrasting what a philosopher sees with what history sees.
“But video games don’t work that way,” Weinberger said. “So they’re changing our conceptions of what story is, why we use stories, and how we use stories.”
After submitting the minor proposal, School of Music Director Cyrus Ginwala and Professor Steve Horowitz contacted Weinberger and suggested working with other faculties on campus.
Horowitz has an extensive background in the video game industry as an audio director at Nickelodeon and co-founder of The Audio Institute.
“We’ve started putting together a consortium of people who are interested,” Horowitz said. “We started connecting with other departments, and that’s how we met Chris [Weinberger].”
Still, the work was a collaborative effort and needed the help of educators and donors to shed light on the minor. The first meeting on VGS involved only the professors of the Music School, but they soon came into contact with more than 20 faculties on campus.
After the minor was approved, the founders could start creating a curriculum, the next stage in the minor’s launch.
“We split into small teams. Some were researching curricula, others researching scholarships, and others looking at institutional data,” Weinberger said.
It took three years to study how students from other institutions study video games. Their collected data outlined three primary focuses for today’s minor: design, theory and interpretation, and social impact in the past.
Each section is taught by different departmental faculties. Faculties of the design department and the Music School teach music making, sounds and design principles.
The second field – theory and interpretation – is taught by teachers from the Philosophy, Literature and Film departments. Communication sciences and history faculties teach the field of social impact.
According to Weinberger, the VGS minor has 30 students this semester.
Instead of a program where you code or create a video game, they have created a study program where you learn about the impact of video games in different areas. Interest is in how video games intersect with different disciplinary methods taught in SF State.
Because VGS is not a major, the degree does not receive any of the benefits that majors get, such as administrative staff, a program president, or a designated agency. Instead, VGS has a consortium where interested teachers meet and discuss how they can teach the program.
“Every faculty member is a volunteer member who does it because they like it,” Weinberger said.
In the summer, Marie Drennan, professor of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, wanted to better gauge the minor, so she asked Weinberger if she could participate in the iLearn as a trial course without credits.
“I learned everything from aesthetics and sound design, philosophy and history, all aspects of video games, video game culture, all kinds of things,” she said. “And that was great because I only learn one small aspect of it, which is writing, but you have to know a lot about all aspects of it to make it all come together.”
Drennan, one of the newest faculties to join VGS, said she became interested years ago and now teaches Writing for Video Games.
While VGS was approved last semester, students have been buzzing about the minor in the Gaming Gators Discord chat since April 2015.
In 2022, the president of the Gaming Gators, Ryan Winter, reached out to Weinberger’s offer to raise awareness about the minor.
“We used our platform, our socials,” said Winter. “Our tweets got thousands and thousands of retweets. Our Instagram posts got impressions, everything happened. The minor had no electrical outlets. We could use our social presence to help.”
The Gaming Gators held a public meeting on campus on August 23, where 150 gamers attended.
Only two attendees raised their hands when Winter asked how many VGS minors were present. Still, several people told Winter they were interested in adding the minor toward the end of the meeting.
Christopher Mullins has long had an affinity for video games and his passion led him to declare VGS his minor.
“I was thinking about doing video game journalism for companies like IGN, so the major/minor combination seemed perfect for that,” Mullins said.
Horowitz, Drennan, and Weinberger agree that VGS will only serve as a gateway to various jobs and career opportunities, especially because of SF State’s proximity to several tech companies and Silicon Valley.
“The game industry is growing,” Horowitz said. “There is a career path. I feel good to be able to tell my students that if you learn these things and if you’re diligent and talented and committed to doing this, you can go out and get work.”
The overall cohesion between all parties has ensured that VGS has been able to make a successful start. Weinberger praised the support he received during the trial and the launch of the university.
“Sometimes when you try to change things in universities, universities are like, ‘well, no, we have rules.'”
Since the inception of the proposal, SF State has been willing to reach out and help in any way they can, which, according to Wienberger, makes the future of the program exciting.
“I’ve been very grateful,” he said. “Looks like pretty much everyone is in favor of this.”
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