[game_edu] Game studies and the economy

[Dan Carreker]

Similar experience.   A friend of mine cut his hours back in at the school he was teaching at.  He taught Programming and intro game design.  The school hired a replacement for his programming classes and gave the new teacher the intro class as well.  Problem is:  The new teacher is not a gamer, had no game experience.  He didn't even know what World of Warcraft was.

This is the only class students have any real exposure to History of Games, Ludology, Philosophy of Games, and Sociology of Games.  And the administration honestly thought they solved the problem.

--Dan


Dan Carreker
www.NarrativeDesigns.com
"If I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. 
 I'd type a little faster."  - Asimov

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Baldwin 
  To: 'IGDA Game Education Listserv' 
  Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 12:32 PM
  Subject: Re: [game_edu] Game studies and the economy


  I would suggest that the bigger problem is not too many game programs, but too many game programs that are being created and taught by unqualified faculty.   This I believe will generate a greater fallout.  One school I teach at considers a network engineering degree to be qualification to teach games!  I personally do not consider computer science to be qualification if the individual has no industry experience, although  I am sure some here would disagree J.

   

  And unfortunately, as the economy gets worse, more and more schools will be looking for any way to attract students.   Game studies attracts students so I am afraid we are going to see more unqualified game studies programs.   

   

  Mark

   

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  Mark Lewis Baldwin

  Baldwin Consulting

  685 Trailside Rd

  Golden, CO 80401

  303-526-9169

  303-408-3727 (m)

  mark at baldwinconsulting.org

  http://baldwinconsulting.org

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  From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Brena Smith
  Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 1:00 PM
  To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
  Subject: Re: [game_edu] Game studies and the economy

   

  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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