Checking in on North America’s first video game college, 25 years later
Welcome to game school
Digipen's 100,000 square foot campus doesn't look like a “video game academy.” At least, not the scare-quote kind. This isn't some Willy Wonka-styled factory of fun, nor a Chuck E. Cheese playland.
TV screens and posters celebrate prior graduates' games, and an arcade cabinet in the lobby plays student projects. Otherwise, the implications of the word “Institute” definitely apply. The place looks like a community college, seriously. From the outside, it's an unremarkable gray building whose giant windows are smothered in blinds. From the inside, it's all small lecture halls bathed in fluorescent lights and massive computer labs broken up by cubicle walls.
The first hint that this place is different comes from the couches. In my first hour at the school, at roughly 10am, I see two students passed out on them. And this is during the school's admittedly slower summer quarter.
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