Last Spring, the USC Games program recently introduced a new course, “Video Game Project Management,” becoming the first university to offer a course specifically designed to teach games as a service.

Live-operation video games have become the dominating force in the gaming industry as of late, according to Jim Huntley, an associate professor in the USC games program.

The term “games as a service” refers to live service games — which are continuous streaming services — funding microtransactions within the games rather than one-time purchases, thus classifying them as a service rather than a good in the market. Fortnite, Minecraft and Genshin Impact are examples of such games.

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“What I saw was that there was no program out there from an academic perspective, not just within our top-ranked program at USC games, but just in general that was teaching students how to thrive and grow a game from a live operations perspective,” Huntley said.

Many console games follow a story arc — containing a start and end — which provides companies with an estimate of the hours spent on the game to base their prices. Contrarily, live service games run infinitely and are often free to play, relying on microtransactions to fund the service, said Cynthia Woll, an adjunct professor at the School of Cinematic Arts who will be teaching the course.

“LiveOps games, they’re usually multiplayer, and that provides a player community that interacts,” said Nevaeh Li, a senior majoring in game development and interactive design. “They create a sense of community and that’s something that indie games are less capable of doing.”

The Games program — a joint program between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering — coordinated with professionals in the gaming industry, including the Epic Games company, to develop the course.

“Especially in the modern era, you need to have the art and the science of a game pretty much on point to make sure that it’s a pleasurable experience for players,” Huntley said. “Being able to make a game and then have a game sustainably be engaging, for players to come back, as well as for new players to join.”

In the class, students have access to a platform called the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, which Huntley describes as a “sandbox” in which students can use various tools to create prototypes of games. In addition to building their own gaming prototypes, students will be tasked with analyzing consumer behavior on gaming platforms, pitching ideas for games and creating events for games that already exist, which aims to maintain player engagement.

“They’ve really nailed home the point that every single decision that all these creators are making, everything at the heart of it is to keep your community and your player happy,” said Ishan Dutta, a sophomore majoring in game development and interactive design.

“Any student who can learn skills of project management and product management are going to be in great shape looking for jobs in pretty much any industry,” said Kyle Ackerman, an adjunct professor at the School of Cinematic Arts who is teaching the course in Spring 2025.

“Data-driven design concepts” are concepts that are useful to know in professions outside of just the gaming industry, said Kerry Zhang, a senior majoring in interactive entertainment. “Daily active users” are an example of such concepts and indicate the “health” of a gaming product by monitoring how many users engage with the platform, said Zhang.

“We need to take some design decisions to attract users back to our game,” Zhang said. “I wanted to be a game designer where I design the mechanics and all those things, and it’s important to have a very broad knowledge of the game industry and all kinds of games.”

Woll said that some of the main concepts taught in the course include pitching, analyzing a game’s analytics regarding user behavior, and monetizing and maintaining a game to ensure it stays engaging. 

“For me, ever since I was a kid, I’ve just always been so fascinated by the fact that you can actually control how these characters interact. That has always been so magical to me,” Dutta said. “To be able to create it is like a dream.”