Dr. Robert Macy, professor of entrepreneurship in the Smeal College of Business, passed along information on a new course that he will be teaching this fall for the first time. The course will cover the business side of video games. Macy said, “There are classes across this and other campuses that cover art, programming and development; but I see a real gap from the business side. I want to try to fill that void — as much as I can in only 15 weeks.”

It sounds like it should be an interesting course for those students interested in building businesses based on video games. Considering that video game developers are always looking for new strategies to profit from gamers, this should prove to be an interesting study.

Macy also said of the course, “The plan is for it to be platform agnostic. The focus is on the business end of things. The synergy between business model and game development documents. As far as game examples, it would be along the scale from mainstream to boutique, from the huge standards such as Halo 3, to causal mmos such as Puzzle Pirates. I will try to cover the spectrum so we can examine the market dynamics that ’should’ drive development choices.”

For interested students who would like to register for the course, here are the SOC details:

MGMT 497A: The Business of Video Games
125683 T R 08:00A - 09:15A
The course is designed to bridge the gap between the design and business of game development. Students will develop the skills to identify and manage the design, development, commercialization, and launch of game products and services. Topics will include: business formation, market analysis, managing game development, human resource issues, business models, distribution and harvesting the venture.