[game_edu] Industry luminaries slam universities' games courses

[Adam Parker]

I hear you, Mike. I'm liable to rant as well, as this proves ;^) so I'll try
to be productive, from a game design academic's perspective.

Here in Australia, our situation is a little different. Yusuf, you'd no
doubt be aware of Krome's apparently terminal status as of this week
(another one in a list of recent collapses), and that profitable survival in
Australia is currently mostly a feature of businesses in non-traditional or
niche areas... with the exception of well funded groups like Team Bondi
(Rockstar) and Bluetongue (THQ).

It's kind of hard to have any conversation with a traditional industry
that's pretty much in its death throes, due to the combined effect of its
own problematic business models which minimised research into independent
IP, a lack of institutional support from government, and the cost impact of
a terrible currency exchange rate. There are now a lot of good people
looking for work, Darius...

Other markets also have to contend with high labor costs and poor support
from governments. One of these causes was well within our local industry's
control - namely, its approach to how it did business. So, this raises some
interesting questions that I'd like to ask of those interviewed in the
article above -

   1. Just what shape should an industry focus have, when the industry is
   itself collapsing?
   2. When an established industry insists on digging itself deeper into
   trouble with weak business models, should we pay it much attention at a
   curriculum level?
   3. Are we academics here simply to give the present industry precisely
   what it wants, or are we not also tasked with providing those challenges to
   its existing poor practices, which challenges are required to push the
   industry towards profitable future incarnations?
   4. When should we academics simply cut our losses with present industry,
   if ever, and move into the future-construction process instead?
   5. What, therefore, privileges industry to have the final say at all,
   when an entire industry (such as Australia's) is capable of such spectacular
   collapse?

With those challenges to industry's automatic authority in mind... I jump
right in.

"We do not need them teaching a philosophy about games, we need computer
science, art and animation."

It seems that this word - design - is the missing word as always. Casey is
completely right.

The game industry wants hard-core skills? Then it needs, through its
academia, to engage with more established design practices that in many
cases simply *do design better*, and to learn from their training methods -
practices with strong academic integrations, and which therefore don't
rubbish perfectly useful philosophical design tools.

I'm thinking of practices like Industrial Design, Communication Design,
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Fashion, Interaction Design, etc etc
etc. These are design fields with deep and meaningful academic traditions.
They know as practices a great deal about developing complex and nuanced
responses to deeply complex systems interaction problems.

And incidentally, they also engage philosophy quite regularly to do it. You
can use it to help you design real buildings, as the Deconstructivists used
Derrida, or as the Expressionists used Bergson, Kierkegaarde and Nieztsche.
Sorry, but to make the kind of comment quoted above is simply to be
uneducated about historical design practices.

Game design is just as complex as any of these design fields, and deserves a
strong and designerly pedagogy to match. And no, I don't just mean "serious
games", I mean *games full stop, no matter the application*. Unlike some, I
believe entertainment is itself a serious business and needs no
justification. At its best, entertainment speaks truth to power - hence
political censorship.

So how could we do this? I am a firm believer in a design focused, pragmatic
approach that aims at competency development, and I love those teaching
practices which feature large amounts of workplace simulation and
practice-led design research. I refer the reader to TU/Eindhoven's
Industrial Design course as one example. This model would propose training
design through use of a learning workplace, and it achieves world class
practical and strong academic outcomes.

I suggest we take a leaf from TU/E's book, and similar practices all over
the larger design world. It's high time a strong, evidence based pedagogy of
practical games design with a deep theory connection was developed along
these lines. I applaud the IGDA curriculum, but it's time to go further.

A curriculum of this kind would be one that aimed to shape industry for the
better through teaching practical research in the commercial practice
through design studies, rather than our simply giving in as academics to an
industry line - a line which is commonly based only in cook-book rules of
thumb generated through unstructured observation, and the possibly valid but
often unverified experiential learning of a select group of noted
practitioners.

In doing so, we would assert that games development is first and foremost a
*design innovation process*, and that the games industry can necessarily
learn from the best practices of these more established design pedagogies in
the way it teaches its young. I believe this especially as I suspect it
would enable students to develop strong and transferable problem-solving
skills that enabled cross disciplinary movement after graduation, as well as
addressing Peter Molyneux's concerns above.

The kinds of learning models that I am suggesting could well help develop a
future industry that recognises R&D as a valuable and indispensible part of
doing designerly business at all levels, and which knows that best practice
means you necessarily read the academic literature in multiple fields as
well as the trade magazines in your own.  An IDEO of games springs to mind
here as the result... rather than the traditional games studio.

I'm sure I'd oppose that, though, if it didn't look like any industry focus
that I'd recognise from past practice. Though I suspect Darius might love
it, at least.

~Adam

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Yusuf Pisan <yusuf.pisan at uts.edu.au> wrote:


> An article pushing for more hard-core skills in game education.

>

>

> http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-10-15-industry-luminaries-slam-universities-games-courses

>

> "We do not need them teaching a philosophy about games, we need

> computer science, art and animation."

>

> It is very very difficult to get the blended education right.

> Universities are much better placed to focus on their existing

> expertise and train students as programmers, artists and animators.

>

> Comments?

>

> Yusuf

>

> --

> A/Professor Yusuf Pisan

> Games Studio

> University of Technology, Sydney

> http://gamesstudio.org/yusufpisan

>

> ==================================

>

> Industry luminaries slam universities' games courses

>

> A number of leading UK games industry figures have highlighted the

> problems with education and training for prospective young developers.

>

> In a report by Eurogamer TV (watchable below), Eidos life president

> Ian Livingstone, currently working on a government-endorsed skills

> review, claimed that "the problem with a lot of universities is they

> offer sort of generalist courses.

>

> "They've crossed out the word media studies and put computer game

> studies. But they haven't actually had a dialogue with industry. We do

> not need them teaching a philosophy about games, we need computer

> science, art and animation."

>

> Observed Frontier's David Braben, "there's been more than a 50 per

> cent drop off in the number of applicants to computer science courses

> at university. And that's in the backdrop of a rise of 24 per cent in

> university entrants.

>

> "There are a lot incentives for universities to increase the number of

> students, because universities are now paid per seat and... there is

> no quality test for what that seat is worth in the sense of what is

> taught. So some subjects are a lot easier and a lot cheaper to teach

> than others."

>

> Mastertronic's Andy Payne felt that there was not enough dialogue

> between universities and developers. "I would argue that our education

> needs more direct contact with the games industry, and I think that's

> down to the games industry to properly reach out to higher education,

> and then higher education understanding what the games industry really

> needs.

>

> "It's not that we haven't got the talent, we just don't produce the

> finished article."

>

> Students at GameLab, supported by London Metropolitan University, were

> critical of other courses. Said trainee Mark Rance, "I've had friends

> other universities that were a bit disillusioned by them, finding they

> were generally a lot of theory and they just ended up essentially

> being able to review games by the end of it."

>

> By contrast, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux was concerned that some courses

> were too specialised to be future-proofed. "The games industry changes

> so quickly that, by the time a student has gone through their three

> year course, the games industry could have changed radically."

>

> The full report, which also investigates controversial course

> Train2Game, discusses the success of Abertay University and talks to

> MP Ed Vaizey about government support for the games industry, is

> below.

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>




-- 
Adam Parker
Senior Lecturer, Games Design (Melbourne)

Qantm College Pty Ltd (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne)
235 Normanby Road
South Melbourne VIC 3205

Tel. +61 (03) 8632 3450
Fax. +61 (03) 8632 3401
Email: aparker at qantmcollege.edu.au
Web: http://melbourne.qantm.com

CRICOS Numbers: 02689A (QLD), 02852F (NSW), 02837E (VIC)
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