For digital media and game design careers, Wichita, Kansas, isn’t typically regarded as a mecca for the profession. Even so, there are students at Wichita State working to create a community of game designers. 

Cole Tourney felt there needed to be a space where game design students could focus specifically on game design in a community setting.

“I wanted something to help people get a little more niche with their stuff,” Tourney said.

He set out to achieve this goal by creating the Game Design Club at Wichita State, making friends and honing his tech skills in the process. 

Tourney, president of WSU’s Game Design Club, became interested in programming while attending high school in Kansas City. His school offered an introduction to programming class, which taught students the basics of coding games through a visual programming tool called Scratch. Because of his passion for video games, he loved the idea of being able to create them.

“I’ve always wanted to make games,” Tourney said. “There was always kind of a stigma around that, like, ‘Oh you’re going into art and video games? What is that?’ But I decided, why not?”

When Tourney first came to Wichita State, he aimed to build up his programming skills by majoring in computer science. Unhappy with many of the engineering aspects of the curriculum, he switched his major to game design, but quickly realized it didn’t meet his interests either. 

Tourney noticed many of the classes game design students were required to take focused more on film, rather than game design. 

“One of the (film) classes was just full of game design majors. We all kind of felt like we got sidelined,” Tourney said. 

He also said there was a noticeable skill gap between some classes, pointing out specific differences between Digital Animation 1 and Digital Animation 2. 

“You went from doing a walk cycle (animating a figure to walk across the screen) with a full character to needing to be able to convey weight in something, and we hadn’t really learned that,” Tourney said. 

Tourney said Wichita State game design students face another issue: the likelihood that they’ll have to leave the state to pursue their passion. 

“There’s not a whole lot going on in the Midwest for media arts in general,” Tourney said.

Tourney hopes the Game Design Club will offer students an opportunity to get media-based internships and job opportunities in Wichita. 

“What our club aims to do, once we get our membership up and going … is to allow them to have portfolio pieces that they can maintain and work on … before their junior and senior year,” Tourney said.

Although these problems were at the forefront of his mind, Tourney was hesitant to take the leap and do something about it. However, the Game Design Club’s vice president, treasurer and Tourney’s long-time girlfriend Emma Pinkman believed he had something to offer his fellow game design peers and encouraged him to start the club.

 “I looked into clubs for him to join and there wasn’t one for game design,” Pinkman said. “He started thinking about how many other people it could help because first years don’t get as many projects (as juniors and seniors).”

After that, Tourney and Pinkman went through the grueling three-month process of registering their club with the university, finally getting it up and running in the middle of the fall semester. The Game Design Club began meeting every other Thursday at Shocker Studios, giving students a space to show off their talents and make friends. So far, they have eight members but are looking to expand, targeting freshmen and sophomores as potential new members.

Pinkman said they plan each meeting using the same general format, but it yields different results each time.

“At every meeting, we have little activities for the members to create a ‘game jam’. You get a theme and then you build a game off of that theme (to show at the next meeting),” Pinkman said. “No two games are alike. So it really shows their creativity.”

Tourney and Pinkman said they wanted their club to be open to all students, not just game design majors. Pinkman, a triple business major, said she has a casual interest in game design and enjoys attending meetings because she loves seeing the creativity that each person puts into their games. 

The existence of the Game Design Club will be crucial moving into the next school year. According to Tourney, the game design curriculum Wichita State offers will be split in two at the start of the 2025-2026 school year. 

“There’s going to be a programming class set, and then an art class set, and so the incoming freshmen are going to be very good at one of those things,” Tourney said.

However, Tourney said it is helpful for students to have experience with both disciplines and the Game Design Club will aid in bridging that gap.

In the future, the Game Design Club hopes to offer students on both sides of the game design realm a space to collaborate, learn from one another and pursue what they are passionate about.

“I think it’s important that we remove the stigma around digital arts and the viability of it,” Tourney said. “I hope we can persuade somebody to follow what they truly want to do if that is something they’re interested in.”