Students enrolled in Mr. Zeller's Fine Arts Survey: Game Development course learn about the historical and cultural impacts of video games along with the creation process of several classic video games. Students get to both build video games and develop an appreciation for this "new" art form.

In March, the Fine Arts Survey students had a videoconference call with former Atari game developer Mr. Howard Scott Warshaw. Warshaw is famous for being the only Atari developer whose published game titles collectively sold over one million copies. He developed Yars' Revenge (1982), the first Atari game to give credit to an individual creator, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982), the first video game adaptation of a film, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a game sometimes credited with the fall of the video game industry in 1983. Many urban myths surrounded the burial of "millions" of copies of the E.T. game, but those theories were debunked when a documentary crew and Mr. Howard Scott Warshaw found the infamous burial site in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 2014. Today (April 26, 2024) marks ten years since the excavation in Alamogordo.

Before their open discussion with Warshaw, our Fine Arts Survey students learned about the creation of Atari and its VCS 2600 console before discussing several factors that led to the fall of Atari. The class spoke with Mr. Warshaw about his achievements and gained a better understanding of why the video game industry almost disappeared in the United States in the 1980s.