With pre-enroll around the corner, I have now opened up applications for the game design courses next semester (CS/INFO 3152, CS/INFO 4152). This post is not an attempt to promote more interest in these courses. I will get twice as many applications as I can accept into the course; applications are extremely competitive. But there are some new opportunities available for composers this year, and I wanted to bring them to your attention.
The courses are not designed to support composers that only work on music. I do not have the training for this and large parts of the course would need to be rethought. We only allow composers into the course when they can do one of the other three traditional tracks: programming, character art, UX design/testing. We make the bar lower for good composers (so a programmer/composer is competitive with CS 2110 and does not need CS 3110), but we still require some expertise outside of music.
However, some groups in the past have asked if they can contract music out to their friends. Not only have we allowed this, but these students were invited to our showcase. In addition, if the game is accepted to a national game festival (like Boston FIG), I include these “contractors” when I offer to pay for the transportation costs.
This year, we have decided to make this a little more formal. We have added an external member option to the application. You can apply to join a team as a pure composer. While we cannot enroll you in the full course, we can give you INFO 4900 (Independent Study) credit for joining the team. The commitment is up to you. We award 1 credit hour for each 2.5 hours of work a week.
If this interests you, I am accepting applications at the link above until December 15th.