[game_edu] "Identifying a Good Game School"

[Ian Schreiber]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the feedback! The true irony of this is that I am an adjunct, not full-time, so what does this say about me? :-)

The main point is not "all adjuncts are bad" -- as you point out, many adjuncts are awesome, specifically BECAUSE they're in the industry full-time and teaching on the side because they WANT to. The danger is too much of a good thing at a school, and I have seen a trend in some schools to cut full-time positions and hire more adjuncts solely because it's cheaper. (I've talked to a number of industry/academic hybrids such as myself who would like to take the leap into full-time teaching, only to find that full-time positions are a lot harder to come by than one would hope.) Seriously, if your staff is 80% part-time, you're going to have problems with consistency, and this is what that part of the article was warning against.

(I would also warn schools that do this, that adjuncts are cheaper NOW because of so many out-of-work people due to the economy, so I suspect a lot of adjuncts are not full-time industry right now but rather "in-between-jobs" industry, using adjuncting to make ends meet in the mean time. When the industry picks up and starts going on its next hiring binge, prepare to kiss half of your adjuncts good-bye, and I sincerely hope you've got enough full-timers left that the entire campus doesn't implode from the sudden vacuum. But that's another story.)

I'll add another weakness that was pointed out to me over Twitter: game dev events and contests, such as IGF and GGJ. Not to say that a school has to have lots of trophies on the wall, or even that they have to participate... but if no one at the school has even heard of these, that would be a problem.

- Ian





________________________________
From: "Roberts, Scott" <sroberts at cim.depaul.edu>
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>
Sent: Fri, April 2, 2010 12:19:13 PM
Subject: [game_edu] "Identifying a Good Game School"

 
Congrats and thanks to Ian Schreiber and Lewis Pulsipher for this
excellent article in the Game Career Guide about choosing a school for game
development.
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/838/identifying_a_good_game_.php
It’s comprehensive and will be a real help to many potential
students (I hope).
 
The only point in the article that disagree with is the
section about teaching, particularly these lines:
“Ideally,
almost all classes will be taught by full time instructors. 
“Schools
more and more are going to the "cheap labor" model of instruction,
using graduate assistants and adjunct faculty, both far less expensive than
full-time teachers.”
Not all adjuncts are the same, and the presence of working professional
adjuncts can be a strong positive, not a negative.  While not every
professional is a good teacher, I think that adjuncts who are working game developers
are invaluable to a program.  It’s very difficult for full-time
faculty to keep up on the rapidly changing processes and technology used in
game development, not to mention highly specialized areas such as motion
capture and rigging.  It has (almost) nothing to do with economics.  While
we’d love to hire more of our adjuncts as full-time, the reality is that
most of them are happy making games full-time, and teaching on the side (“I’ve
still got a couple of games left in me...”)  A balance of full-time
and working adjuncts can result in a stronger program, in my opinion. 
 
The question you suggest asking, “Are the teachers
good teachers?”, isn’t necessarily connected to whether someone is
an adjunct.  Adjuncts can be great teachers.
 
That said, I apologize for pulling out that one point of
disagreement in a long article that I really like and will recommend to high
school students!  You’ve done a great job.
 
Scott
 
Scott Roberts
Associate Professor
School of Cinema & Interactive
Media
DePaul University 
SRoberts at CIM.DePaul.edu 
 
http://GameDev.DePaul.edu/ 


      
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