Many people are familiar with Robert De Niro ‘s ‘Tribeca Film Festival’, an event much like the ‘Sundance Film Festival’ though held each year in the heart of Tribeca neighborhood in New York. The ‘Tribeca Flashpoint Academy’ is a little less known, but the program is accelerating their game design courses into a two-year cirriculum. 

 

The Tribeca Flashpoint Academy (TFA) is home to the ‘Game and Interactive Media’ program that provides future game developers a chance to become part of the industry that they love.

 

The TFA is a condensed, “hands-on curriculum” that is now offering an associate degree in just two years. Providing developers with a portfolio of “real-world project work and professional collaboration” upon completion according to a press-release sent out earlier this morning.

 

“Getting my name in the credits of a fully developed and eventually published game in my first year of school is more than I ever could have imagined,” said Patrick Purcell , a Game + Interactive Media student who collaborated in the development of ‘Avarice’,a title that was released on Steam earlier this year.

 

“The real hard thing to find is people that are well-trained and prepared to take on this field,” Steve Gradman of gaming startup Kaboom told CBS news of Tribeca students. “They’re ready to go right out of the gate and what’s nice is they’re use to problem solving things they don’t know.”

 

“The curriculum is designed to introduce students to the four main disciplines that are part of game development: programming, art, design and production,” said Nick Ehrlich , chair of Game and Interactive Media. “Every student is exposed to all four of those disciplines their first year. Once they have that experience, in their second year they actually choose which of those disciplines they’ll focus on and they spend their second year really locking down and putting their nose to the grindstone to become the best producer they can be”. The program is a joint-venture with Robert De Niro ‘s Tribeca Enterprises.

 

source: tfa