From PONG to the Metaverse: Game Design & Creative Technology Careers
Urban Arts graduate Giselle Muriel interviews PONG inventor Al Alcorn and Tilt Five founder Jeri Ellsworth about the game design industry and where students can find opportunity today.
At 24, fresh out of college, Al Alcorn took a job at a tiny startup called ATARI for $100 a month less than he was already earning. The company had three engineers, no roadmap, and no industry to join, because video games didn’t exist yet. As Al put it during the webinar, “We didn’t know much about how you’re supposed to do this, and we kind of made things up as we went along.”
His boss Nolan Bushnell, a Video Game Hall of Famer, handed him what was supposed to be a training exercise: build a simple electronic version of table tennis, learn from it, and apply it to the next project. But Al kept improving it instead. He sped up the ball to make the game more fun. He figured out how to add sound. ATARI released the prototype to see if anyone would play it. Millions did, first in arcades and then at home.
Fifty years later, Al joined Jeri Ellsworth, founder and CEO of Tilt Five, and Giselle Muriel, a 2023 Game Academy graduate now in her senior year studying computer science at Barnard College, for the webinar, From PONG and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators. The conversation spanned three generations of game creators, from PONG in 1972, to the technology being built right now, to a student who learned to code by making games.
From Gardens to Game Levels: An Endless Summer of World-Building
This summer, a garden in Manhattan became a video game, students in the Bronx built entire worlds from scratch, and hundreds more joined in from across the country! Beyond Urban Arts’ usual Game Academy programs, our middle and high schools students plugged into game design through two Summer Rising residencies, two Bronx workshops, and our national StoryQuest Camp, using open-source tools from Endless Studios’ Threadbare.
Summer Rising is New York City’s free summer program for public school students, combining academic support with hands-on enrichment. At MS297 in Manhattan, Urban Arts teacher Caroline Turret guided roughly 100 rising 6th-8th graders through a summer exploring St. Luke’s, a nearby public garden. Through Threadbare: Explore, each class built its own platformer level in Godot themed around the garden, dodging cars, flies, and bees through city streets. At 08X371, a Summer Rising site in the Bronx, Urban Arts teacher Dario Bolivar led 65 sixth graders through the full game-making process: brainstorming, art, animation, music, storytelling, and marketing.
Testimonial Video by Dario: Watch here
We also ran two workshops with Fordham University’s Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), supporting 40 Bronx middle and high schoolers on the path to college. Taught by Caroline alongside Urban Arts alum Paola Soto, students built character animations for a 2D platformer, including one who created a full set of assets for a squirrel collecting acorns. A parent wrote that their son “couldn’t stop talking about today” as the experience broadened students’ sense of future paths in STEM.
Rounding out the summer, StoryQuest Camp — an online game design “sprint” with students joining virtually from across the country — brought together 119 students across four cohorts, taught by Urban Arts alumni MG Irvine and Richard Nguyen. Students built ambitious final levels in Explore: Godot, from dash mechanics and gravity flips to grapple hooks and full boss fights. As MG put it, “it was really cool seeing who was interested in narrative, or art, or coding, and seeing how they all tackled different problems in their own way.”
Built with Endless, brought to life by our students.
From PONG to the Metaverse: Urban Arts and Tilt Five Bring Together Gaming’s Pioneers and Its Next Builders
Back-to-school webinar connects the origins of video games with the skills and career pathways available to students creating games today
As students head back to school this fall, national non-profit Urban Arts and independent studio Tilt Five are highlighting something that captures the attention of millions of young people: video games. But this webinar is about more than playing games. It is about what students can learn by creating them, and how game design can open doors to careers in computer science, engineering, art, design, and creative technology.
On September 10, Urban Arts and Tilt Five will host “From Pong and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators 👾,” bringing together two generations of game creators: Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer who created the original PONG, and an Urban Arts graduate who designs, builds, and teaches games.
For teachers and schools, the webinar will provide a look at how game design can engage students in computer science while connecting classroom learning to real-world careers. For students, it will offer a chance to hear how one of the earliest commercial video games was created, see projects from Urban Arts alumni, and learn what it takes to turn an idea into something people can actually play.
Access That Changes Everything: Inside Urban Arts’ 3rd Annual College Forum
For students from low-income communities, the biggest barrier to college often isn’t ambition, it’s access. Last Friday, Urban Arts hosted its 3rd Annual College Forum at PwC in midtown, free through our College Access Program, ensuring our students enjoy direct access to both higher education leaders and college representatives.
Director of Post-Secondary Success Joelle Blackstock hosted and organized an hour-long panel featuring two industry leaders committed to expanding pathways for all students, with Urban Arts alum and ambassador Faiza Mohammed serving as moderator:
Dr. Charles J. Gibbs, Ed.D., President of Metropolitan College of New York
Sabrina Avila, Senior Manager of the STEM Research Academy at CUNY K16 Initiatives & Adult Pathways
Students and parents called the conversation “inspiring,” “encouraging,” “motivating,” and “very interesting.”