Peking University launches video games industry course

This semester Peking University is offering a new course called General Video Games, which is proving to be popular with students, reports Beijing News.

The course teaches students the theory around video game development, and they get to hear lectures from experts in the gaming industry. By the end of the course they are required to design their own video game project.

Young Chinese players play online video games during an electronic sports competition in Yantai, in east China's Shandong province, on September 23, 2017. [File photo: IC]

At first, 120 places were offered to students, but that has grown to 150 because of its popularity. Around 50 students who didn't formally enroll have also been attending the class.

"The course is not to train students in playing electronic sports, but to introduce issues relating to video game R&D, technology, industry, media, and psychology," said course instructor Chen Jiang, who believes it is possible for Peking University to set up a game-related degree major in the future.

Chen explained that the purpose of the course is not to challenge convention. Rather, the country's video game industry is developing at an unprecedented speed and is in need of a large pool of talent.

According to a 2017 report on the development of China's game industry, the sales revenue of China's game market is the highest in the world at 204 billion yuan, which is around USD $32 billion. This is USD $500 million higher than the sales revenue of the industry in the United States, the world's second largest market.

Early in 2016, a higher vocational school in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region pioneered the establishment of China's first e-sports course. And in 2017, the Communication University of China set up a digital media art major that focused on the planning and operation of digital games.