“Uruguay is a country that has recognized this demand. ORT University in Montevideo was a pioneer in offering, in 2010 and within its School of Communication and Design, a bachelor’s degreeprogram in Animation and Video Games, ”states the IDB report. It was from that point on, the report details, that other universities in the region soon joined the educational initiative, in which skills such as abstract thinking, mental agility, problem-solving, mathematics, and marketing are combined with creativity.
The organization notes that video game education spans a wide range of fields, including animation, digital arts and media, video production, animation (2D and 3D), sound design, storytelling, architecture, game design, character and level design, programming technologies, virtual and augmented reality, and marketing. This is why the video game industry can rely on teams made up of professionals from a wide variety of disciplines.
“Professional video game development offers endless opportunities for employment in Latin America and the Caribbean,” adds the IDB.
When it comes to virtual reality and augmented reality video games, the study highlights Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico as the countries that have taken their first steps in the market, thanks to games such as Alchemist Defender (winner of the 2017 Uruguay National Video Game Competition), Game Coder (Mexico), and Ship Ahoy (Argentina).
ORT teachers were also recognized
The report also has section titled “Latin Americans Recognized Around the World.” In it, the IDB recognizes Gonzalo Frasca, ORT’s professor of video games, and Sofía Battegazzore, a faculty member at the university. Both founded one of the region’s first game development studios: Powerful Robot, which created games for global companies such as Disney, Pixar, Cartoon Network, and Warner Bros.
Frasca has created—together with a team of teachers, educators, and video game designers—DragonBox School, a system for teaching math to elementary school children that has already been tested in schools in France, Norway, and Finland, and which he hopes to soon bring to Latin America.
For his part, Battegazzore worked on the Loog Guitars app, the children’s video game *Tiny Giant Leaps*, and the game *Paleo Detectives*.