By Sandra Davie

REDMOND, WASHINGTON, U.S. - Throughout her teenage years at Nanyang Girls' High School and Victoria Junior College, Melanie Chin left her parents fretting about the endless hours she spent playing video games.

They wondered if all was lost when she chose to do a degree in making video games.

After receiving her A-level results in March last year, she secured a place in the Singapore campus of the DigiPen Institute of Technology.

To her surprise, the institute, dubbed the Harvard for game developers and animators, offered her a scholarship to its American campus in Redmond, Washington, instead. It had decided to delay opening its Singapore to the middle of this year.

'I couldn't believe it. I'd get to study in DigiPen in the US, in Seattle, a hot spot for the gaming industry,' recalled the long-limbed 20-year-old who, with coloured streaks in her hair, resembles a Japanese anime character.

But first she had to persuade her civil-servant father and housewife mum.

'I explained how game development was serious business and showed them how the curriculum involved high-level maths and science. They relented,' she said, sitting in a classroom at DigiPen campus nestled in the woods in Redmond, Washington, a stone's throw from Microsoft and next door to Nintendo.

The only other Singaporean among the 950 students there, 25-year-old Low Xian Yang, relates a similar tale.

The mechatronics engineering graduate from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, now in his third year at DigiPen, said: 'My dad was hoping I would go into biotech, so he was really surprised when I told him I wanted to learn how to design video games instead.'

The self-confessed games addict became hooked during his polytechnic days. 'After my gaming binges, I would go to bed thinking up ideas on how the game can be made better.'

It is comments like these that DigiPen officials listen out for when choosing students. That, and top grades in advanced mathematics and physics.

Every year, the school gets 12,000 requests for applications. About 1,000 eventually compete for around 250 slots in two undergraduate degree programmes in game development and animation.

But getting in is just the first hurdle, before a rigorous four-year course.

The month-long summer break is on, but many students have stayed for more classes or to complete projects. Bleary-eyed as they arrive for early morning classes, they describe the pace as gruelling, intense and rough.

Those doing game development programme have to survive 18 courses in mathematics, 26 levels of computer science, six courses in physics, as well as eight semesters of projects designing games.

The place looks more like a grey office building than a university campus, has no dormitory activities, sports club meets or sorority dances.

There is little socialising beyond a quick commiserating chat at the 7-Eleven next door, while getting a refill of a caffeine-packed soda drink.

When deadlines loom, students put in 16-hour days, churning out thousands of lines of computer code. Some burn out. Others quit altogether. The attrition rate for each cohort is about 20 to 30 per cent.

Mr Low summarises his second year in one word: Hellish. 'There was a constant flood of work. I was staying in school from 8 am until midnight for weeks. Luckily, I have a close circle of friends and we all helped each other out. If not for them, I would not have made it.'

But DigiPen president Claude Comair is unapologetic. 'It is not meant to be easy,' says the Lebanese-American who transformed DigiPen from a 3-D graphics production house into a leading institute for game developers.

'The gaming industry is an exciting industry but it is also a tough one. It will not tolerate mediocrity.

'Gaming companies spend millions, as much as US$15 million (S$20.5 million), to make a game and they can't afford to have a miss. With gamers becoming more sophisticated, the pressure is on to make games faster, with exciting, new storylines and graphics, and more immersive than the last,' he said.

DigiPen graduates have met the exacting demands of gaming companies and are snapped up by top game developers and publishers such as Nintendo, Electronic Arts, ArenaNet, Valve and Lucas-Arts.

Many get two or three job offers when they graduate. Typically, their starting wage is US$50,000 to US$60,000 a year. Within a few years, they make US$100,000 or more, if they are part of a team making a best-selling title.

Mr Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet US, the studio behind Guildwars, said of the DigiPen graduates: 'They are among our most talented and capable developers. They are ready to hit the ground running.'

Mr Comair said that his graduates enter a recession-proof sector.

'Other industries have their ups and downs, but the game industry just keeps soaring,' he said, pointing to forecasts of a worldwide video game market tipped to exceed S$67 billion by 2011.

He was in Singapore last week for the opening of the DigiPen campus, which starts in September with a pioneer batch of 40 students.

Mr Comair promised them an equally rigorous education as at the US campus, and the same sterling job prospects.

He noted Singapore's success in drawing some of the world's biggest video game makers here, including Electronic Arts, the world's top game publisher, and Ubisoft, which has hit titles such as Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.

He is confident DigiPen will help draw more here. After all, when his university first set up in Redmond in 1998, there were just seven game companies there. Now there are over 50, located around the school itself.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on 9 July 2008.