[game_edu] UPDATE: ‘Devs must aid academia, not b***h about it’

[Jim Parker]

I put together a game programming course in 1999 with a Vancouver 
company, Radical Entertainment.

They were interested enough to give me a few hours with some of their 
designers and project managers at their shop, and we put together a 
syllabus as a group. Then they allowed two of their people to come and 
deliver lectures in a 1 week/35 hour 'block' course. The rest of the 
term was for completing student projects, guest speakers, tutorials on 
software, etc.

This is still happening, but it depends on the goodwill of the folk 
doing the classes. The University flies them out (Calgary is about 1000 
Km from Vancouver, fairly near by Canadian standards) and puts them in a 
hotel, but now their time comes off of their vacation from Radical. 
There's a small fee paid them, which they donate to a charity. I think 
this is a good example of what can be done jointly, but over time I 
think Radical's commitment to this has declined (they were also bought 
by Vivendi, but that's another story) and so has the department's. I'm 
not certain how hard this would be to start these days.


> As for the content of the article, I'm admittedly US-centric, but I've 

> felt frustrated from both sides. Yes, a lot of game devs really fail 

> to reach out to academia... although in some cases this isn't a lack 

> of interest but a lack of time (if you're in 90-hour crunch, are you 

> REALLY going to be responding at length to an email from some 

> school?). But I also don't see a lot of academics reaching out to 

> industry; the article says universities are "crying out" for industry 

> attention, but what does that mean? Are they offering paid 

> consultancies when setting up their curriculum? Do they offer to take 

> a studio out to a nice dinner in exchange for the conversation that 

> comes out over that dinner? Even without money, do they treat devs 

> with personal and professional respect... even the ones who don't have 

> a PhD (or even a BS)? Or are the academics just sitting and waiting 

> for devs to fall into their laps, guilty of the same "b***hing" that 

> the devs are doing?

> - Ian


-- 
from Plasma611
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"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance 
that we can solve them.                  I. Asimov .........................

Dr. J. R. Parker,                    Digital Media Laboratory
Professor of Play                    http://www.ucalgary.ca/~jparker
Faculty of Fine Arts (Drama)         jparker@ ucalgary.ca
University of Calgary                403-220-6784      AB606/AB611