"Twenty years ago, a game was made by one guy, or two or three people," he said. "There were no books, there were no Web sites, there were no degree programs. But the mentor model doesn't produce enough new talent. The games you see now take up to 200 people to make. You need a more institutionalized pipeline of training developers."
Although vocational schools lead the way in issuing certificates in game development, universities have decided it's their turn to play.
"Students are demanding these types of programs, and schools are listening," Della Rocca said. "These classes do well in terms of filling classrooms."
In many ways, creating a video game is like making a movie. Development teams include designers, producers, artists, programmers and sound engineers.
The game designer acts much like a scriptwriter, generating the idea behind the game and developing its story line.
Producers manage the day-to-day creation of games based on the designer's vision.
Artists and programmers do the brunt of the work, with a typical ratio of two artists for each programmer. The artists serve as set and wardrobe designers. They shape, shade and texture the characters and their environment.
The programmers are choreographers, setting forth algorithmic code that breathes life and movement into the artist's creations.
Another Hunt Valley game company, Firaxis Games, employs about 25 programmers and 40 artists. Its success is based on Civilization, a popular franchise developed in 1991 by Sid Meier, the company's creative director and a gaming legend.
"When guys like Sid got started, it was something they did as a hobby," said Barry Caudill, Firaxis' executive producer. "As the games get more complex and more real looking, it takes a lot more artists to sell it to audiences."
Marc Olano, a computer science professor at UMBC, said the school's gaming classes are designed to augment broad-based training in visual arts and computer science. "Even if they don't end up working in the game industry," he said, "they get a solid education."
The program has separate tracks for artists and coders, echoing the division of labor in modern video game companies.
Katie Hirsch, 26, head instructor for the Anatomy of a Video Game class at UMBC, is the rare developer who straddles both fields.
Her interest in video games stemmed from a middle-school fascination with drawing cartoons. "I wanted to be the next Charles Schulz," she said, referring to the creator of the Peanuts strip.
