Worcester Polytechnic Institute will take over the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute after Becker College, MassDiGI s host, closes following the end of the spring semester.
WPI previously offered to host the video game center when Becker announced in late March it would close its doors because of financial difficulties. That was made official in an announcement at the center on Monday.
Timothy Loew, the MassDiGI founder and executive director, called the institute and WPI a perfect match. Like Becker, WPI, located only a few blocks away, has an internationally renown video game design program, which started in 2004 as one of the first such undergraduate degree programs in game design.
Becker College’s Worcester campus so blends into its neighborhood west of downtown someone could pass through and, if it weren’t for the blue Becker banners on a few dozen buildings, barely notice it’s a campus at all.
But how seamlessly Becker’s roster of late 19th-century and early 20th-century buildings fit amid the blocks of shaded streets just off Elm Park puts pressure on Worcester and Becker to ensure the buildings find new useful life after the school closes after the spring semester.
“They are extremely important properties in the city,” said Deborah Packard, the executive director of Preservation Worcester, an advocacy group for historic preservation.
While none of the area schools provided a bailout to Becker, they did step up to find homes for key programs, with the biggest move from Clark University in Worcester.
History of Becker College, dating to 1784 (Leicester Academy)
Telegram & Gazette Staff
1784
1788
1791
The earliest documented presence of female students at the Academy is found in the diaries of student Ruth Henshaw, who would become early 19th-century portrait artist Ruth Henshaw Miles Bascom.
1834
John Barton of Nova Scotia and Horace Dickenson of Montreal become the first-known international students at Leicester Academy.
1836
1840
1880
First perfect game in Major League Baseball is pitched by J. Lee Richmond of the Worcester Worcesters at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, now the Weller Academic Center quad on the Worcester campus.
1884
1886
Elliott P. Joslin, the first doctor in the United States to specialize in diabetes and the founder of today’s Joslin Diabetes Center, graduates.
Are you game?
There has been talk for a while of gaming being about to enter a golden age.
A glimpse of that came to Worcester in 2019 when the annual Shine Super Smash Bros. Competition was held at the DCU Convention Center for the first time, with thousands of people in attendance. For the final matches between elite players, the stream racked up more than 10 million unique views.
That was just esports, and pre-pandemic. The unknowing might just have shrugged.
However, I think it (gaming) was entering a golden age, said Timothy Loew, executive director of Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) based at Becker College.