For many years now, the hot gaming industry has been fighting for the best talent, competing for grads that are fresh out of a program, often with no experience in the corporate environment. This lack of experience is both frustrating for companies and new employees. For example, employers in the industry experience a lag time of up to four years of additional training before any new hire becomes fully integrated and productive. On the other hand, grads fresh to the corporate culture toil with their inexperience and frustration in an alien work environment.

The Center for Digital Media in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada seems to have come across the ultimate solution, allowing students to hit the ground running upon graduation. In fact, the program has been touted as being “the only program of its kind in the universe” and they aren’t too far off, at least for the time being.

Canada and specifically, Vancouver, British Columbia, has become the epicentre of video game and digital media development. With a video game juggernaut, Electronics Arts, calling Vancouver home and a large production queue of Science Fiction television and movie projects (Stargate and Battlestar Galactica Anyone?), this is the place to be if you want to be in the thick of things. Unfortunately, the demand for people skilled in this area of expertise has grown exponentially, making it difficult to attract and retain the right talent. To plug the brain drain, the Canadian government partnered with the gaming industry to create Canada’s first Master’s Degree in Digital Media at the Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC).

How To Become a Master of Digital Media in Ten Easy Steps…Sort Of…

The program launched this past September of 2007 in true Digital Media Style. The event was simultaneously broadcasted onto the virtual world of Second Life while the school’s directors and visiting dignitaries brought their Avatars to life in a virtual-world. The crowd, equipped with laptops, manipulated their own avatars in real time with the action as the whole event was projected onto huge screens in real-life and in virtual-life. This is definitely a school that both talks the talk and walks the walk.

The program requires a full 20-month commitment and ends in a fully paid summer internship. Along the way, students participate in projects that integrate both theory and real world work conditions led by prominent industry professionals and representatives from top companies. The projects are real and have real clients, therefore, they have the same real problems such as time, budget and resources. Students, working in teams, are put to the test through these true to life exercises while learning how to marry creativity along with sound business practices. Clients currently participating in this program include government agencies responsible for high profile projects such as the Canada Line transportation project to sustainability simulations for the fisheries.

This hands-on experience is put to the test again in the Summer internship where potential graduates are tossed into the real world to prove themselves worthy of the title of “Masters of Digital Media”. Upon completion, graduates will receive the combined academic powers of four leading academic institutions including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Needless to say, the class graduation ring will be quite the “bling bling”, bearing the seal of all these high powered Internationally Acclaimed institutions…and that piece of paper too. Yes kids, it’s a real degree…a Masters in fact…so you can get your parents to back off.

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