Learn More About the GIMM Degree
From the Program Director, Anthony Ellertson:
The Games, Interactive Media & Mobile technology program prepares students to create the experiences that manage the technology in our work and personal lives. Routinely professionals interact with online tutorials, websites, tablets, smart phones, and video streaming. The GIMM major provides students with the skills to execute work in all of these areas.
With a GIMM major, students will graduate with the knowledge to produce and manage innovative hardware and software that increase the usability of and pioneer new applications in these technology platforms. In short, students will design and build mobile apps virtual learning environments, and new machines that deliver these user experiences.
Students who graduate with at GIMM degree are qualified for what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has identified as high growth professions including, but not limited to: Mobile App Developer, Video Game Designer and Web Developer, which pay on average of $80-90,000 a year. The major will draw from diverse departments including Art, Computer Science, English, IT&SCM and Educational Technology.
Introduction Video
Video Transcript
(upbeat music fades in)
[Ryna Hall, Games, Interactive Media, And Mobile Technology]: GIMM, it stands for Gaming, Interactive Media, Mobile (Technology) because that kind of breaks down the genre of what we go through. We go through gaming, we go through interactive media, and we go through mobile development. Especially like in your first year, you’ll start off with some interactive media and just general arts, you kind of get an idea of what the rest of the degree will look like.
[Jarne Sennesael, Games, Interactive Media, and Mobile Technology]: What brought me to Boise State’s GIMM program was that I’ve always been really interested in video games. Game design is something that I really wanted to pursue, and I looked into it and I lived in Idaho and I thought that Boise’s GIMM program kind of sounded like it would really fit that so that I could study game design or anything that’s in that adjacent field.
[Jessna Rodriguez, Games, Interactive Media, and Mobile Technology]: I think it’s pretty much what I expected. A lot of people expect it to be a lot of game development and playing games, and while we do do some of that, it’s more than that. It’s innovative technologies, and so we do mobile apps, we do 3D modeling, art. Our senior game is a VR game that we make on our own, but we also make like serious games for doctors and other real life scenarios. More than just video games.
[Jarne Sennesael]: I think the program definitely has given me some professional experience. I’m part of the GIMM’s dev team, so I come in 10 hours a week and we do projects for clients. A lot of it is building apps. We work with Gear Up Idaho, it’s a program that works with Idaho high schools and middle schools and tries to teach them some of the technologies that we work with. And so we do a lot of client work, and I think that’s definitely relevant experience. What I love about GIMM is that it’s a really great community, I think. I think a lot of us are here just to make cool stuff. We just want to have fun and be creative and make really cool things. And yeah, I think a lot of the people here are just here are just here to have a good time, be creative and have fun.