Peter Govern's first year at Marquette did not go very well. Actually, it went a little worse than that.

"I failed," Govern says. "I failed badly."

Govern came to Marquette as a biomedical engineering major with plans for a career in bionics. His classes were not as much of a match for his skillset as he anticipated. He got failing grades in most of his engineering courses freshman year. He was close to leaving Marquette entirely but decided to give it one more shot by transferring to the Diederich College of Communication.

It didn't take him long to see that it was where he was meant to be from the beginning.

"I was telling my new adviser that I really liked storytelling and it's something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life," Govern says. "I even told her about a manuscript for a novel I wrote in high school and how I hoped to get it published. She said, 'Why on Earth weren't you here to begin with?'"

Soon afterward, Govern uncovered something exciting: the college's newly minted games and interactive media minor, which is now a concentration. He had thought about pursuing game development in high school before choosing engineering instead. This time, he followed his passion.

"I'm majoring in digital media and the requirements for game design have a lot of overlap with that program already," Govern says.

The games and interactive media concentration trains students on the software, techniques and cultural background of successful video game production. Students in the concentration take mandatory courses in scriptwriting and game aesthetics, then have a pool of electives to choose from that includes computer science principles, sound design and 3D modeling, among other essential skills.

Eric Kowalik started teaching game design after years as a web developer. He's also an instructional designer in the Center for Teaching and Learning, helping professors develop learning materials for their classes. One of the things he immediately wanted to do for his class was broaden their horizons on what a successful video game could look like.

"Take a basic game of tic-tac-toe," Kowalik says. "It's a game of skill. How can you add some luck to it? How can you modify the game to put some chance-based mechanics in? That's a programming and design challenge that we ask our students to solve to introduce them to level design concepts."

A lot of people think game design is just coding or animation, and there are a lot more job opportunities in the field than those.

In another class, students are learning how to use Unreal Engine, a highly technical computer graphics tool that is industry standard in game development, to create basic cutscenes. The course makes use of the college's Wakerly Media Lab, which contains a wide range of tools to facilitate student creative work. Students with experience in Adobe Creative Cloud and other crucial software staff the lab during business hours, and professors provide learners with personalized attention to help them bring their vision to life.

Christina Espinoza, a senior digital media major who is interested in working in film, took a game aesthetics class taught by Dinesh Sabu, assistant professor of digital media and performing arts. After taking the course, Espinoza said that she might be more interested in pursuing a career in gaming instead.

"We read a few texts that had interesting perspectives on feminist tropes in video games, what makes video games enjoyable to play, and what we as players get out of it," Espinoza says. "That class really opened my eyes to using games as a way of drawing attention to social issues."

Students do more than just learn the skills behind making a game; they are also tasked with figuring out what a path into the industry might look like. Kowalik asks students to look up people who work at major developers, such as Epic or Electronic Arts, on LinkedIn and use them as models for their own career trajectories.

"A lot of people think game design is just coding or animation, and there are a lot more job opportunities in the field than those," Kowalik says. "There are people who write stories, there are people who design sound, there's marketing, there's community managers. The number of possibilities out there are exciting."

Those possibilities have become apparent to Govern, who excitedly relays all the makeshift ways he improvised sound effects for a class project. (A tea kettle for the beeping of a robot, a spray nozzle from his food service job for steam.) After starting college off-track, Govern has found a renewed sense of purpose, thanks in part to his game design classes.

"If the chance ever came up to intern or work at a game design company, I would take it, no questions asked," he says.