The Center of Excellence (CoE) concludes the first phase of Video Games Design and Development training

As sales of mobile and console games are increasing at an unprecedented level, interest in game design and development as career paths have also been on the rise.
The IT Center of Excellence has devised and started a pilot program in digital games design that is intended to benefit university students, recent graduates, and ICT sector employees. The program is designed to help graduates and job seekers to gain skills and access work opportunities in the growing sector of video and mobile games development. In addition to the hands-on training component, the program aims to achieve the following:

Build an institutionalized training program that can produce a pipeline of skilled game developers focusing on technical art, game programming, and game design. 
Create and expand university-industry partnerships in games development.
Encourage and support faculty involvement in mobiles’ games industry.

The first phase of the training entailed 3 main topics of the digital game design process mainly game psychology, user experience, and marketing and publishing principles.
The extensive 40-hour training was attended by university students, game developers, and graphic artists working in the field and was delivered by experts in the gaming industry from the US and Canada. The lead trainer, Heather Kelley, is a professional game designer and media artist who has been active in promoting games development as a creative expression tool in different social contexts and has received many technology and gaming design awards.
The next phase of the training program is designed to allow the trainees to develop their digital gameplay prototypes and will feature an online component through which the trainers will deliver some training sessions online.