USC serious games degree at the University of the Sunshine Coast

The University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) began its first semester of the Bachelor of Serious Games Development on September 1, 2015, with enrollments open for 2016. The three-year undergraduate degree was presented as the only one of its kind in the world. Associate Professor Christian Jones designed it, with the idea that video games can change public attitudes and help tackle global problems through story and ethics.

The program centered on how games are used for education, marketing and real-world problem solving. Students could specialize in game art, interactive narrative or programming and work in project teams with game writers, artists, programmers and designers to produce and publish serious games. Internships and real-world projects were part of the plan. A major in Serious Games Development took eight courses, and a minor took four.

The launch coincided with research from the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA). Its Digital Australia 2016 study, run at Bond University, surveyed 1,274 households and 3,398 individuals drawn from the Nielsen Your Voice Panel in May 2015, with a margin of error of 2.7 percent. It found that 68 percent of Australians play video games and that 24 percent had used games at work for training. The average player was 33 years old and 47 percent of players were women. Among respondents, 89 percent said video games can improve thinking skills, and 35 percent said their children had used video games for the school curriculum. The same study put growth of the Australian game industry in 2014 at 20 percent.

The university now uses the name UniSC, and the original usc.edu.au address for the degree page forwards to unisc.edu.au and shows a page-not-found message. The degree itself has a page there under the title Bachelor of Serious Games, and a notice at the top of that page says it is no longer updated and dates itself to August 20, 2018.

According to that page, the last intake was Semester 2, 2018, and applicants are referred to the Bachelor of Design (Game Design). The listing gives a three-year full-time length and Sippy Downs as the study location. The USC serious games degree is therefore a closed program, and anyone interested in the field at the university can start from the game design degree the page names.