A five-year tie-up between the Media Development Authority (MDA) and the university in Boston has produced the Singapore-MIT Game Lab, which will enrol its pioneer batch of game designers and media researchers by the middle of next year.
Announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday, the initiative will bring together Singapore game designers, MIT academics and game-industry professionals for research into the creative, business and social aspects of computer gaming.
They will also develop games for public distribution.
The lab, situated at MIT, is the latest move to jump-start the fledgling interactive digital media (IDM) scene here.
IDM, identified by the National Research Foundation early this year as a key industry for the future, encompasses activities like animation, video games, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
Mr Michael Yap, the executive director of the new IDM R&D Programme Office here, described IDM as a developing field in which sure-fire bets were hard to spot.
The office has $500 million in its kitty to grow the IDM sector for the next five years: It aims to create 10,000 jobs and contribute $10 billion to the economy by 2015, up from 2003's $3.8 billion.
Apart from helping universities here discover cutting-edge technologies, the office will also fund research into the impact of digital media on society, and convince companies to test the latest technologies here.
Mr Yap said: 'We want to be the world's preferred test bed for digital media. We already have some of the newest technologies in high-definition television and fibre-to-the-home.'
Schools are also expected to be a major part of the IDM push. They will look into using technology to make lessons come alive.
Physics, for example, can be taught by using a racing game where cars react realistically to crashes.
At least 15 schools will be picked to test new technologies by 2015.