The Game Production Studio represents a collaboration between the College of Sciences and Humanities and the College of Fine Arts, specifically the Department of Computer Science, the School of Art, and the School of Music. Students in the Game Production Studio are part of an innovative new curriculum at Ball State University. Three different departments have come together to create cross-disciplinary programs of study focused on game design and development.
The Game Production Studio in Robert Bell 353 is a new space for innovative teaching and learning at Ball State University. The students in the studio engage in real-life independent game development. They use this space to workshop their ideas, create their own video games, start real companies, and release their games commercially on digital distribution platforms, such as Steam.
The studio contains 25 Alienware Aurora R15 workstations. These machines are designed for serious game development, equipped with 24GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and 64GB RAM running with 13th Gen Intel Core i9 processors. The artist stations feature Cintiq Pro 24 P displays and the programming stations have ultrawide monitors for effective development and collaboration.
Game Production Studio
- Students majoring in Computer Science, Visual Arts/Animation, and Music Media Production can choose games-related concentrations that will have them taking courses from the other two disciplines. This culminates in a three-semester, interdisciplinary, team-taught capstone experience in which students work in teams to produce original video games. The first semester of the capstone is devoted to preproduction, where teams develop ideas into prototypes and pitch these to industry experts for review. The best of these projects become the seeds for a full year of production.
- In addition to the considerable technical skills that students learn as they turn their inspiration into real video games, they are also learning how to communicate, to lead, to inspire, to collaborate, to reflect, and to evaluate their work.
- A gathering area where the whole team can meet and review their work
- Its own conference room for planning and discussion
- Five separate "pods" where student teams can work together with workstations, whiteboards, and configurable tables
- Card-swipe access for studio members so they can access the space outside of scheduled class times
Interdisciplinary Collaboration