When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown, millions of people turned to video games to maintain social connections and escape the monotony of quarantine. Time spent gaming during the pandemic rose by double digits in all regions, and digital game purchases increased 21% a global statistics and market data platform
But ever since travel and social distancing restrictions were lifted, the gaming industry has endured financial whiplash program coordinator of the master in game science and design program at Northeastern University’s Oakland campus. Layoffs eliminated an estimated 45,000 jobs between 2022 and 2025, Tech Insider reported. And investments have increasingly shifted away from games and into AI, Mathe said
Grim though the state of the games industry may appear, Northeastern game science and design students and faculty say making video games remains one of the best ways to stay nimble and resilient as they search for jobs in creative, technical or research-focused fields.
Students can use their passion for game design as an educational vehicle, Mathe said, gaining skills that can be easily transferred across industries as they wait for the games business to restabilize. This includes a deep understanding of the design process, from concepting and prototyping to user tests and product modifications. They also leave with the ability to develop their own high-quality visual and storytelling styles, which Mathe said separates their work from hastily made, AI-generated game content.
“We give them the tools to think critically, understand a player’s experience and how to improve it in an iterative fashion,” she said. “All of this can apply to a lot of different domains.”
On a recent weekend, Northeastern master’s students Nathan Lawson and Jocelyn Chiang put these tools on display as they presented two of their homemade video games to a crowd of hundreds at the 12th annual Gameheads showcase, which was hosted on Northeastern’s campus. The Oakland-based company connects students aged 15 to 25 with video game professionals, who guide them over a 10-month period in creating their own video games from scratch before showing them off at the yearly event.
Chiang and Lawson, though not Gameheads graduates themselves, shared their work to educate the younger students on the kind of skills they could gain in Northeastern’s game science and design program, a two-year graduate level degree program offered in Boston and Oakland.
Their brightly-colored puzzle game “Quest for Dendoro” is aimed at elementary-aged players, allowing them to control a squirrel knight and its bird companion as they chase down a thieving raccoon that made off with the queen’s amulet. Meanwhile, “Keep Up the Good Work” – which Chiang, Lawson and their team members created over one week as part of a limited-time design challenge – forces players to fulfill menial workplace tasks for an overbearing boss, such as making coffee and approving reports, before the timer runs out and they are fired. They created the games alongside fellow Northeastern students Rachel Hsiao, Jiayi Zhang and Qitao Zheng.
Northeastern game science and design professor Cliff Lee said his students can use their work on the games as an attractive point on their resumes because the assignments forced them to “think like a researcher.”
Before they began developing “Quest for Dendoro,” Chiang and Lawson spent time analyzing the ways fourth and fifth-grade students at the Oakland campus’s Children’s School played and thought about games, they said. They observed the children as they interacted with physical and digital games during weekly visits, working with them to come up with a game concept that would appeal to their interests.
The students expressed a fascination with fantasy themes and cute animals, Lawson said, leading him to the idea for the game’s main character to be a squirrel in shining armor. Lawson and Chiang’s team created five levels, including the final level in which players must defeat the devious raccoon in a challenging combat encounter, that they determined through further research would hold the children’s attention without boring them.
“Lots of people make games, but how many have engaged in a multiple-month process with a potential client on game design, especially with a younger-age audience?” Lee said.
Lee’s research-centered curriculum includes learning science elements, teaching students to collect and analyze data to determine what best suits their intended audience. He provides them access to the campus XR lab, where they can observe players’ pulse rate and eyeball-tracking data while they play.
“It also allows them to venture beyond just the game industry, like working with a medical company that wants to tap into some play-based digital application,” Lee said. “The research side, while not AI-proof, does bring in critical social and science skills that there’s going to be a need for.”
For instance, Chiang said she found success using her game design background to land an internship this summer as a project manager in the Black Box film production department at Original Force Ltd., a global art and animation studio.
“I had a handful of opportunities to use my other skills, such as drawing visual effects and user interface concepts for two separate projects, and HTML coding for an experimental website concept,” she said.
Over the weekend, Gameheads students gathered in Chiang and Lawson’s room, rapidly clicking to try and claim the high score on “Keep Up the Good Work” and steering the squirrel knight toward the final boss in “Quest for Dendoro.”
Co-founder of Gameheads Damon Packwood said the enthusiasm on display at the event should be a of a games industry in flux. As young developers seek out greater job security in other fields for now, he said, they should continue creating games as a way to express themselves
“It is not an easy industry to get into, but it is a fulfilling one,” Lawson said. “There’s joy to be found, and that’s something I want to experience.”
