DigiPen is a private school, which was founded back in 1988 by Claude Comair. In 1998 they became the first school in the world to offer a bachelor's degree in video game development. Today, DigiPen is a prominent school for games and technology, with campuses in the US (Redmond, Washington), Singapore, and Spain.
The curriculum here is pretty versatile, covering a number of different topics, including computer science, game design, music and sound design, and digital art and animation. DigiPen also has an active R&D department, which develops tech for different clients including Boeing, Formula One and INDYCAR.
DigiPen students have won 55 awards at the annual Independent Games Festival, more than any other school in the world
DigiPen offers other services, including K-12 educational programs in STEM subjects.
More than 300 companies have hired DigiPen alumni, including tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Nintendo.
Who actually teaches at DigiPen? Well, here are just a few examples. The Animation and Production Chair Dan Daly spent 12 years at Walt Disney Feature Animation, working on The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, John Henry, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear.
Senior Lecturer Matt Brunner worked at Microsoft as an art director, cinematics director, and experience director, most notably on the game Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. He also helped to develop Dark Void and Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Senior Lecturer Randy Briley from the Department of Digital Arts worked as an art director for Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Newline, EA, and Microsoft. And Mark Henne, director of the MFA in Digital Arts programs, worked for years as a technical director at Pixar and contributed to seven of their feature films, including Toy Story and Brave. Needless to say, there's a lot of talent on the faculty.
DigiPen boasts an astonishing number of student success stories. Probably one of the biggest ones was the creation of Narbacular Drop, which later transformed into a hilarious and challenging first-person puzzle game Portal, produced and published by Valve. It wasn't such a big surprise, since the DigiPen campus in Redmond is so near the heart of Steam. Funny enough, the sequel Portal 2 was also strongly influenced by a DigiPen student game, Tag: The Power of Paint. Today, many DigiPen graduates are working in famous game companies including Microsoft, Nintendo, Bungie, and Blizzard Entertainment. You can learn more about their success stories here.
