Could you create the next Minecraft, Mario Kart or Dota 2?

If you've just been accepted into one of the world's top-ranked departments of computer science and are looking for something a little different along your way to becoming the next Raquel Urtasun or Brendan Frey, check out the video above.

In the video, Steve Engels – an associate professor, teaching stream in the Faculty of Arts & Science – walks you through his half-semester course where undergraduate students not only learn how to design video games, they also get to watch gaming enthusiasts try them out at the annual Level Up Showcase.

The conference draws recruiters scouting for new talent.

“I came to this event to see the amazing concepts the students came up with,” Martin Labrecque, CEO of Labrecque Labs says. “We're also looking for talent – to see who's driving innovation in the game design and gaming community.” 

Ubisoft's Heather Steele echoes the sentiment. “We're a growing game studio at Ubisoft Toronto and we need amazing talent to help us make games.”

More interested in creating a machine to play the game for you? Read about the U of T computer scientists who helped Google DeepMind's AlphaGo win against Fan Hui 5-0.

More interested in playing games than creating them? At the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, a new scholarship is coming in 2018 for a gamer who excels at eSports. U of T alumnus Victor Xin will fund the new scholarship to support an Engineering student with high academic achievement and a passion for electronic sports. The scholarship was recently featured on CBC News. 

Not interested in games at all? Maybe you'd rather develop a computer algorithm with the ability to identify speech patterns associated with various types of dementia or use artificial intelligence to solve legal challenges. U of T's department of computer science, considered one of the top ten in the world, is basking in the spotlight these days, getting recognized for producing an amazing pool of stars in artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

At a recent conference held at U of T's downtown Toronto campus, the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL), one of 10 accelerators on campus, said  it's been “inundated” with calls from the global entrepreneurship community and getting recognition from Silicon Valley.

Uber recently selected Associate Professor Raquel Urtasun to lead a new research lab in Toronto that focuses on self-driving vehicles. And four years ago, Google hired Geoffrey Hinton, a University Professor Emeritus, referred to as the “godfather” of deep learning. Both are key founders of the recently launched Vector Institute in Toronto, which hopes to promote research and commercialization of AI technologies. Several of Hinton's students have gone on to also become leaders in the field of machine learning.