Game Design: Culver City High School
Model AED Pathway: Game Design
Culver City High School is a diverse urban high school, located in Los Angeles. Kian Darien is the Game Design teacher for Game Design I & II. When his program received the Epic Mega Grant from Epic Games, Darien went to work on designing a curriculum that encompassed a broad survey of game development. Students explore a variety of roles including Production, Design, Art, Coding, and Testers and work on game development teams.
Pathway Courses:
Concentrator: Game Design I
Capstone: Game Design II
Industry Partners
High School Esports League, Epic Games and Razer are some of the industry partners involved in the Game Design Program at Culver City High School.
Industry Partner Engagement
The industry Partners engage with the program in several ways. Some of those being: Field Trips, Guest Speakers and Industry Reporting.
Students have had the chance to take a field trip to the Razer Store Opening where they got to make content with the industry partners on site. Razer also hosted an end of year game showcase for the students.
Work Based Learning
Students in the Game Design Program at Culver City High School get the chance to participate in actual team based game development with industry standard tools and exercises. They also learn marketing on social media and product management.
During Game Design 1 students experience a simulated studio environment and the teams learn project management, production processes and pipelines, and work together to deliver a game made with Unreal Engine 5. In Game Design II there is a similar simulated studio / publisher environment where some students work on making a game and others work for the publisher as producers and simulate the interplay between the two entities. Students also get the chance to prepare for an event/expo with students making marketing assets, content, trailers, and preparing demo experiences for their games.
Student Success
Culver City’s game design pathway has had multiple students graduate and go on to programs at Gnomon and UCSC Game Design. The after school esports team continues to succeed in Smash Bros.
