[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[John Hopson]

I think the best preparation that you can do on this front is to make sure
your students have the experience of working on an extended project with
lots of moving pieces and a schedule to live up to.  They'll naturally feel
the same pressures that industry folks do when they face the choice between
cutting a feature or crunching to get it in the game, especially if you're a
little rigid on the grading criteria.

Of course, you can also stack the deck slightly in the planning stage to
ensure that a "teachable moment" will occur.  :)

John


On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:


>  There's a really interesting thread going on at the QoL SIG right now and

> I wanted to bring a splinter of that thread over here. So I wanted to bring

> up the following for discussion:

>

> First: what kinds of QoL discussions do you have as part of your formal

> education of students? For example, I introduce the topic in my Industry

> Survey class (the "ea_spouse" letter is required reading, and we discuss the

> implications and effects of that letter on the industry as a whole), and I

> also regularly remind my students of the sometimes harsh conditions in my

> other classes, particularly if a student complains that they didn't have

> time to finish an assignment or that they have a lot of demands on them

> outside of class ^_^

>

> Second: is "crunch" or long work hours something that is (or should be)

> part of the student experience for someone who wants to break in to

> industry? On the one hand, we should be doing our best to simulate

> real-world working conditions so that students are appropriately trained and

> prepared for the reality of the industry (this also likely makes them more

> marketable as well, if they have survived a difficult dev cycle). On the

> other hand, the industry (particularly the IGDA) acknowledges that excessive

> crunch is a problem, and introducing students to what it is like may make

> them more likely to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it (and it

> doesn't do anything to help the problem of burnout -- really, are we doing

> our students any favors if they graduate, get placed in a job, then leave

> the industry a few years later?).

>

> What do you all think? How do you actually handle this on a personal

> (instructor) level, program level, and institutional level? How do you think

> schools SHOULD handle the subject?

>

> - Ian

>

>

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