Thibault is in his first year as director of games and esports and associate professor of practice for the Texas A&M College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts<\/a>. He took the baton from the influential Andr\u00e9 Thomas, who established the LIVE Lab<\/a>, served as adviser to the Texas A&M esports team and played a leading role in the Visualization<\/a> program\u2019s gaming curriculum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve received the warmest welcome,\u201d Thibault said. \u201cI\u2019m still drinking out of the firehose between research and continued development on projects \u2014 and our Game Design and Development minor<\/a>, which we\u2019re looking to expand. Everybody is so positive and welcoming, and there\u2019s a great energy here. That really goes a long way to make it easy to step in and commit to all the hard work that has to be done to be successful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI really think that Texas A&M represents the best merging of technology, art, philosophy and common-sense management practices that the game industry sorely needs more of.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tim McLaughlin<\/a>, dean of the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, said Thibault’s background, energy and ideas are an ideal fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Our students prepare for two things that we expect will be a part of their careers post-graduation: translating creative thinking into real-world problem-solving using technology, and working collaboratively,” he said. “Aaron\u2019s teaching, and the leadership he brings to the LIVE Lab and esports, embody both.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault had early encouragement from family members including his mother (a restaurateur and culinary arts entrepreneur); his grandfather (a researcher, engineer, physics professor and a radio operator in World War II); and his grandmother (a painter and officer of the Rhode Island Watercolor Society). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Game inspiration came from Thibault\u2019s grandfather, who taught him to write and program his own games on the TRS-80<\/a>. He would build upon a tutorial\u2019s instructions to add interactivity of movement. Some games took a few hours to complete, some took a few days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was almost the equivalent of ‘Flappy Bird,’ <\/a>fun examples of better-known games,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you have a bouncing ball, try to add movement with the arrows to get it to go into a hole in the wall, like the ancient Mayan ball game. Or simple, single-player racing games, simple platform adventures. Things that if I lost them, it wouldn\u2019t be the end of the world, but were fun to keep running on the machine as long as possible \u2014 until I had to wipe them and start over.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault thrived in the early-\u201980s video game boom, noting that he was among the lucky ones to get the game-changing Atari 2600<\/a> console the first year it was available. Like most kids in that era, he was naturally swept up in \u201cPac-Man\u201d fever, though he preferred its spinoff, \u201cMs. Pac-Man.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Thibault\u2019s mother was hired to lead hospitality at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, Thibault found a free arcade for students in the commissary. With a box to stand on, he beat the high scores on games including \u201cMario Bros,\u201d \u201cGalaga,\u201d \u201cRobotron\u201d and \u201cSpy Hunter.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was there more than the college students,\u201d he said with a laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault moved to Houston in 1987, and enrolled at the University of Texas in 1993. He pursued media projects there including photography, hosting a syndicated music video show for MuchMusic and serving as a master control operator and audio technician at the CBS affiliate. Thibault helped to start the student TV station, TSTV, which earned FCC approval, and to take student radio station KVRX from cable radio to an FM broadcast station. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With a degree in communication\/radio, television and film, Thibault first began working in games for Origin Systems, a game development company in Austin that had been bought by Electronic Arts in 1992. He started as an audio intern, then was quickly promoted to sound designer, technical animator, cinematic director and external producer. He put together teams to take on projects including creating marketing trailers and videos and updating art and content for games, along with creating processes to onboard college interns into development teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Thibault pondered his next move, he began thinking about \u201ca new kind of company.\u201d He wanted to explore opportunities for making games and interactive media by incorporating research and development he had worked on that didn\u2019t yet exist in the market. He found a kindred spirit in George Kozmetsky<\/a>, cofounder of Teledyne, dean of UT\u2019s College of Business Administration and founder of the IC\u00b2 Institute<\/a> economic think tank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kozmetsky had financed a game called \u201cMoon Base\u201d about colonizing the moon, and the World War II veteran aimed for it to help the U.S. Army War College think differently about the future and wars over resources, Thibault said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe had a real passion for game-based learning,\u201d Thibault said. \u201cJust before I talked to him, he had funded a lab called the E-Learning and Training Labs \u2014 ELT Labs \u2014 which helped his mentee, Michael Dell, hire all the kinds of people he needed to grow his company.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault and Kozmetsky were aligned in a focus of artificial intelligence, andragogy \u2014 the way adults think and learn\u202f\u2014 and multiplayer online technology. Mass customized learning could be enhanced by game technology, which could then benefit scaling learning and the global economy, he said, and new methods of managing creative people would enhance those efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In three years with IC\u00b2, Thibault contributed to a number of projects. The Army was going through a digital transformation prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, he said, and he helped to develop a decision-making training platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt brought together the needs of warfighters and support servicemen and women across medical and logistics and information systems,\u201d he said. \u201cWe fielded a game-based training platform that had a very flexible scenario-development framework.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault also helped to implement the first game design classes at UT and served as co-professor of the inaugural class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His next stop was Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2005, where he served as deputy director and lecturer for game development, a program known as SMU Guildhall<\/a>. Thibault was instrumental in starting the world\u2019s first graduate degree program in game development there, which was designed to reflect true needs of the game industry to provide the best career opportunities for students, he said. A team of professionals \u2014 known as Guild Masters \u2014\u202fserved as mentors and represented the wide range of disciplines within the industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were extremely entrepreneurial,\u201d Thibault said. \u201cWe started advertising the program before we had all the faculty hired to gauge worldwide interest in a program like this. We got a lot of positive feedback and interest and pre-enrollment requests. So that gave us the encouragement to start the program with the gifts we had received from Linda and Mitch Hart, which established the Hart eCenter<\/a>. It quicky evolved to be its own standalone program because of how popular it was.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault said it was \u201crewarding and satisfying\u201d to launch the first graduate program for game development, and the game industry responded accordingly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt quickly became known that this was the place for recruiters to go if they wanted to get the best and brightest students for their jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd because we came from industry, all of us who founded the program, we were able to work through our networks to understand the needs the hiring managers had, as well shape our curriculum to what that future looked like and to seed opportunities for students. It was hugely gratifying.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The industry came calling again in 2007, and Thibault moved a bit further north to Frisco, where he joined Gearbox Software<\/a>. He helped envision new games and intellectual property and to improve and standardize practices and production processes, serving as vice president of product development, then vice president of strategic operations and executive director of Gearbox Gives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A key project for Gearbox was \u201cBorderlands,\u201d<\/a> the first-person shooter that debuted in 2009. The game sold 2 million copies that year, leading to a series of sequels and spinoffs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe reception that the world had to \u2018Borderlands\u2019 when we launched the first game was amazing,\u201d Thibault said. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge highlight in my career. Working with that team was one of the best experiences I\u2019ve ever had, until I got to work with the \u2018Borderlands 2\u2019<\/a> team, which somehow surpassed it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other highlights in his 16-year stay at Gearbox included the patriotic storylines developed in the \u201cBrothers in Arms\u201d<\/a> World War II franchise, and the evolution of the \u201cDuke Nukem\u201d<\/a> alien-invasion shooter series. Gearbox hired an entire graduating class of SMU Guildhall students to make a bundled, virtual-reality title for \u201cBorderlands.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A pattern has evolved in Thibault\u2019s career, he noted: Jump into innovative work in industry, then contemplate how that work and the processes could be improved upon, and transition to a place where experimentation and innovation thrive. That tends to be back in academia, he said, but with an important connection back to industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault had long established ties to the Texas A&M Visualization program while at Gearbox. He served as an industry adviser to the program and to the annual Chillennium game jam. He also partnered with Dean Tim McLaughlin to develop a near-peer mentoring program for the Longview Independent School District, bringing graduate students from Texas A&M and Prairie View A&M to help middle-school students see a career path in STEM and in video games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe continue that today,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of my passion areas is career pathway education for young people.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thibault\u2019s ties to the Visualization program opened the door for his new role as director of games and esports and associate professor of practice, which began in the spring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe level of collaboration that I\u2019ve had with the Visualization program and the eagerness to reshape the world of education for better, with better practices in making games and media, is very appealing to me,\u201d he said. \u201cThe reputation of Texas A&M students to do the hard things in games and technical art has been impressive. And I wanted to be part of that, and in helping to define how this next generation of practitioners and thinkers learn their craft and get connected with making future products.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nReady Player One<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Move To Texas<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Thibault\"](\"https:\/\/pvfa.tamu.edu\/app\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Thibault.png\")
Return To Industry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Gearbox\"](\"https:\/\/pvfa.tamu.edu\/app\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Gearbox-1024x768.png\")
Howdy, Aggieland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n