Utah's Got game: Local Schools are Producing Cutting-edge Game Developers.

• Author: Sorensen, Dan

No matter who you are, odds are you've played some sort of video game in your life--whether it's a game of solitaire on your computer, Farmville on Facebook or an intense first-person shooter.

What you may not know is that Utah has had a hand in the video game industry from its inception with Pong in the '70s to the latest mobile games. Pong, a bare-bones simulation of table tennis, was created by Nolan Bushnell, a Utah native and University of Utah alumnus who went on to co-found Atari.

Now the state is home to major video game studios like Electronic Arts and Disney Interactive. And local universities are playing their part by educating the next generation of game designers. While video game design programs are fairly new, they have grown exponentially in recent years, propelled by the growth of gaming across the world.

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), nearly 60 percent of Americans play video games. While that may seem surprising, it makes sense when you consider how mobile devices have commandeered our lives. These devices follow us everywhere and are turning us all into garners, whether it's Candy Crush, Angry Birds or Scrabble.

Indeed, the video game industry is massive--it's expected to reach $111 billion by next year, according to analyst firm Gartner.

With many games now grossing billions of dollars, and the highest-grossing title, World of Warcraft (WoW), reaching a mind-blowing $10 billion in revenue, it's no longer only about fun and games, it's about business. Video games have the capacity to gross more than any other type of entertainment media. As a comparison, WoW quadrupled the revenue of Avatar--the highest grossing movie of all-time.

Cooperative Garneplay

The University of Utah has a long, distinguished involvement in computer imaging--particularly 3D graphics and computer animation. This competency has naturally grown to include video game design, and the U is regularly ranked as having one of the top computer gaming programs in the nation. Most recently, Princeton Review listed the U's video game design undergraduate program as second in the nation and its graduate program as fourth.

Not too long ago, game designers were simply computer programmers who tweaked their skills to create video games. While this was sufficient in the days of Pong, Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong, expectations grew increasingly fierce after titles like Call of Duty, WoW and Grand Theft Auto started selling tens...