[game_edu] Game studies and the economy

[Scott Maddock]

That was me.  I don't think the school's program is going to fold because
they nixed the openings for more faculty (but it might start crumbling if
they don't retain the people they already have who are holding the program
together...that's another story).

I do think it's possible that game development is something of a "fad" in
the higher levels of academia right now.  We may see a bubble forming now
that will burst (think dot-coms ten years ago), leaving only the few
programs that truly managed to do something special (CMU's ETC comes to
mind), and it'll be chalked up to a failed experiment at other schools that
move on to the next bright, shiny thing they can use to try and boost
admissions numbers.
Or I could be totally wrong ;)
2009/4/2 Brena Smith <brena.smith at gmail.com>


> So it seems I've started quite the conversation here...just to steer it

> back to education a little - do you all think there are too many programs

> out there?  Do you foresee some schools shutting down programs altogether?

> Someone early on in this thread stated that he knew of a school that had

> prepared to hire faculty - only to shut down the search due to the budget.

>

> This kind of thing is happening all over universities and colleges - from

> history departments to the sciences - and libraries for that matter (I'm a

> librarian).  But I wonder if the fall-out for game studies might be greater

> in the long run due to its "new-ness" (for lack of a better term).  Once the

> economy recovers (here's hoping), and endowments and grants gets back on

> track (again, here's hoping), history and science departments will continue

> to grow and develop - for the most part, this is hiatus.  Will it be the

> same for game studies?

>

> And thanks for all of your thoughts - they have all been interesting.

>

> Best,

> Brena

>

>

>

> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Mike Reddy <Mike.Reddy at newport.ac.uk>wrote:

>

>> Games Grads in UK has been cancelled. I talked to the head of Tandem, who

>> fortunately still have the Develop Conference to fall back on, and he

>> confirmed that only 5 companies were prepared to exhibit, compared with over

>> 1000 registered students for the Manchester event. Other potential

>> exhibiters either had job freezes or were making people redundant. Sent a

>> really chilling message to more than the 17 students I was going to drive up

>> there! Morale is lower than low now!

>>

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