Teaching Digital Game Curricula in the Communication Discipline in Higher Education Institutions in the Greater China Region: A Curriculum Analysis Approach

Abstract

Digital game revenue in Asia is predicted to reach USD$20 billion, about 38% of the world market. As a result, higher education institutes in this region have enthusiastically developed programs to educate future digital game professionals. However, how have communication-related programs responded to the challenges and opportunities of digital game industries remains to be studied? In this study, we collected curricular data from 62 communication-related programs in China, Hong-Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan and provided the following observations: 1) The majority of communication-related programs in the Greater China Region has not offered comprehensive digital game curricula; 2) Newly-established programs are more responsive to the challenges and opportunities of digital game industries; 3) Courses in digital games are limited in scope and mainly concentrated on technology- and content-production dimension; 4) there is an observable relationship between faculty academic training, program direction, and course contents. Pedagogical implications were also discussed.