Full Article: https://prime.dailybruin.com/Primegamedevelopment

For most of his life, Sagan Yee didn’t know video games could be art.

But in 2013, at an energetic game party in Toronto, Yee encountered a strange accessory: a handmade arcade machine fashioned as a backpack. The backpack soon drew a crowd of gamers who took turns playing on the old-fashioned arcade-style controls. As Yee played games on the back of Eddo Stern, the director of UCLA’s Game Lab, who had flown in from Los Angeles for the party, he learned that those games weren’t vintage arcade titles but rather created by students under the guidance of Stern.

Years later, when Yee was searching for Master of Fine Arts programs after the pandemic, he recalled Stern and his bizarre arcade backpack. After hopping on a call with Stern and researching the Game Lab online, Yee applied for UCLA’s Design | Media Arts MFA program as his top choice. To him, no other program encapsulated the indie game scene so authentically.

From computer science students pushing the technical limits of game engines to English faculty experimenting with interactive narrative mediums, video game development at UCLA is as amorphous as it is robust – even without a formal game development program. Student game developers have found communities and collaborators across a variety of organizations, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of game development by bringing together the fields of art, coding, writing and sound design.

Now a second-year design media arts graduate student, Yee’s workspace sits across from the same arcade backpack that introduced them to the MFA program at UCLA. The backpack is one of many colorful decorations in the Game Lab; it sits alongside a wall of event promotion posters, floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and copies of games, and remnants of massive installation pieces strapped to the ceiling.

"A lot of folks are coming around to the realization that games are the art of systems. That’s what makes them unique."
While Yee is primarily an artist, part of the joy of making games is that the industry does not constrain its artists to one particular medium but rather allows for creative expression across different mediums under the umbrella of interactivity.

"A lot of folks are coming around to the realization that games are the art of systems. That’s what makes them unique," Yee said. "All of those things interact with each other in ways that you did not predict."

Miller Klitsner, a UCLA alumnus and adjunct instructor of virtual and augmented reality at the ArtCenter College of Design, said the process of game-making is influenced by various disciplines, culminating in the unique experience of exploring each field individually.

"Games are the medium of all art forms merging into one, like animation, cinematography, interaction design – which is also an amalgam of things – drawing, music," Klitsner said.

For Klitsner, game development is also a balancing act of dreaming up imaginative concepts and fine-tuning the mechanics to turn these ideas into reality. For example, he has worked on a variety of games that explore the interactivity behind sound and music. Klitsner said the result is similar to the trajectory of a song: The more impactful moments of the game come across as sonically intense. Sound design also provides the player with a more tangible form of feedback than the visual interface, he added.

Other professors examine games through a literary lens. Down the street from the Broad Art Center in his Kaplan Hall office, Assistant Professor of English and design media arts Daniel Scott Snelson bridges the world of video games with creative writing. Drawing from his background in experimental writing and art, Snelson and his students study video games using critical lenses such as race, gender and class.

Illustration of a half-developed video game character on a grid background.
(Jelani Kawaichi/Daily Bruin contributor)
For Snelson, the divide between disciplines can become siloed, so integrating his two fields of study has become a priority for his teaching.

"In the English department, I have to make a case for games as valuable media to study or to use as creative material," Snelson said. "And in the design media arts program, I get to make the argument for poetry as a valuable art form for understanding our place in the world, for better understanding technology and as another device to help my students develop artistic practices in games and otherwise."

Fourth-year English student Brent Tuverson said Snelson introduced him to the academic culture behind games, and his support has encouraged Tuverson to pursue an undergraduate honors thesis that analyzes the capitalistic influences behind job simulator games. Tuverson said the experimental nature of Snelson’s courses have encouraged him to think critically about games as if they were a piece of literature.

As a poet, Tuverson applies his interest in game studies to his own creative work.

"When one makes a poem in a game or makes a word game that is interactive, there is this sense of embodiment within the work itself," Tuverson said. "I connect more with gameplay that creates poetic meaning."

Illustration of a half developed video game character on a purple background.
(Jelani Kawaichi/Daily Bruin contributor)
Although Tuverson doesn’t develop video games, he has worked on the creation of his own tabletop roleplaying games such as "Scorched Earth," a trivia-based adventure made in response to a book about an end of the world caused by the internet, he said. Tuverson’s poetry engages in media conversation in a similar way. For instance, one of Tuverson’s past poems examined the world of "Super Mario Bros." in a postcolonial style, which Tuverson said allowed him to live in that world more completely – a level of depth that is only possible for him through games.

But game development doesn’t have to be academic, nor does it have to be experimental.

As a recent graduate from Sheridan College’s undergraduate classical animation program, Yee assumed he’d be going into the animation industry – until he stumbled into Toronto’s indie game art scene. Under the guidance of video game not-for-profit Hand Eye Society’s six-week game development workshop, Yee created their first game despite having no prior coding experience: an adventure game in which players control an Icarus who must build a jetpack instead of wax wings — replete with hand-drawn illustrations by Yee himself.

"In the fine arts sphere, there was a lot of looking down on games for a long time."
This was a new idea for Yee, who began to see video games – and by extension, animation – as an emerging art form rather than a commercial product in the world of industry.

"In the fine arts sphere, there was a lot of looking down on games for a long time," Yee said. "But I think those barriers are starting to blend together a lot more than they used to."

Xiner Lan, a design media arts graduate student and current Game Lab resident, considered a career in painting after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design. Lan assumed installations or performance were the only acceptable methods of bringing games to her MFA at UCLA.

Instead, they found the Game Lab welcomed video games as an equally critical medium. As a Game Lab resident, Lan said they were able to receive critique on the development of their visual novel-styled role playing game "DisplaceMen," a passion project several years in the making that was a finalist for the 2025 Independent Games Festival’s Best Student Game – the game was outcompeted by fellow UCLA student Vinny Roca for the top prize.

However, the Game Lab is not the only home for experimentation on UCLA’s campus. In addition to teaching, Snelson and his colleagues have worked to create the Text/Tech Lab. The departmental initiative not only offers high-tech resources to facilitate game-making such as design computers but serves as a collaborative space for game-minded students and faculty as well.

Other clubs on campus, such as the Association for Computing Machinery, provide students of all skill levels the opportunity to develop games of their own. While ACM’s game-oriented branch, Studio, remains part of a computer science organization, board members represent the many mediums involved in game development such as art, writing and sound, said third-year cognitive science student and former co-president Joanna Liu.

"ACM Studio specializes in game development, and our mission is basically to make sure that any aspect of game development is accessible for all students on campus," Liu said. "It’s under a CS club like ACM, but we really try to also emphasize the other parts of game development, so this includes art, writing, music, sound and more. What we try to do is not only expose the field to more people but also try to develop people's skills in the field."

Illustration of an incomplete cowboy drawing holding a gun on a red starry background.
(Jelani Kawaichi/Daily Bruin contributor)
Like many of the students they hope for their club to attract, Liu and last quarter’s Studio workshop chair Aubrey Clark were drawn to ACM Studio out of their own longtime passion for video games. Clark, who is a fourth-year linguistics and computer science student, said their love for video games began when they were young with the discovery of Adobe flash player games on their family computer. Now, inspired by their love of exploration games such as "Outer Wilds" and bolstered by their programming background, Clark has developed games of their own.

Currently, Clark’s team is developing "Psychosis," a first-person shooter game set in a world that normalized hiring hitmen online. The project has allowed Clark to collaborate with his peers to create a thought-provoking project while continuing his childhood passion.

The project has also provided a space for the convergence of the many mediums involved in game design, Clark said. Although they concede responsibilities on facets such as graphics and sound, Clark remains involved in the gameplay side of the project, they said.

"I think having collaborators makes that easier … because the bouncing off ideas and the peer pressure — collaborating is definitely very important for making games," Clark said. "In fact, a lot of the time for gameplay specifically, a big theme is that you need to test your game. You cannot do it alone."

Throughout the academic year, ACM Studio hosts development workshops and game jams —marathon-style game development events — catered to students of all technical skill levels. Clark said game jams serve as a way to make game development more accessible for students who lack prior experience.

Led by student experts, Liu said the game jams teach participants crucial skills in the development process, such as how to navigate game engines, camera work and character design.

"If you've never touched a game before or game development before, you can learn how to make a game," Clark said.

Like Clark, those developing a game seldom do it alone. Lan said the Game Lab provides a space where students can retain creative freedom in their projects while still working together. That space supported the development of "DisplaceMen," where Lan managed most of the game’s writing and programming as the rest of her team – some working on the game outside of UCLA – contributed to the project’s art. Lan added that everyone on the team switched roles every six months to encourage a more equal distribution of work.

"If you've never touched a game before or game development before, you can learn how to make a game."
Yee, who is more accustomed to developing games in a game jam environment, said the process of creating a game is very different from the media arts process that requires more isolation. Yee’s experience with making indie games is very spectacle-focused, with many of his projects meant to be played in short bursts surrounded by a crowd of people, he said.

Regardless of how the game is produced, Tuverson said that games, like poetry, are about connecting with other people – whether that’s emotionally or intellectually.

"Art should be communal," Tuverson said. "I think that’s wrong to say video games are meant for only the individual."

Whether they be created in solitude or alongside others, found ubiquitously across all spheres of game development at UCLA is the hope to push the boundaries of expression through this multifaceted practice. Students and faculty alike often find that game development is more than just a means to an end – but also an answer.

For Snelson, the answer is one that looks to the future.

"These can be dark times, and I find games are a place where I both find peace and comfort or distraction, but spaces where new imaginaries for a different kind of future and a different kind of present can emerge," Snelson said. "I'm interested in games as ways to open our imaginaries toward a better world, a more just world, maybe a stranger world, maybe one that's guided by a different set of rules."

Davis Hoffman and Gwen Lopez // //