[game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

[William Huber]

And I think this is horrible. It will reduce diversity in the industry; it
would, as she pointed out herself, had kept her out of the industry *at a
time in which programming was even more central to game design that it is
now.* When she began at Atari, there were no high-end tools, no Unity, no
Torque, no engines, and no high-level programming languages that allowed
people to create games without deep and subtle computational ability - yet,
she was the beneficiary of people who took a chance on her, on let her
develop a relationship with the company, and by her own admission, she is
only learning how to code now.

In Japan, while this is changing, it is still possible to be hired based on
a sense of your compatibility with the work environment, and to be trained
for job particulars later. Shigeru Miyamoto did not know how to program when
he was hired at Nintendo, and he wasn't able to program Donkey Kong himself.
Keita Takahashi studied sculpture in school, etc.

I don't think the industry has our students' interests at heart, ultimately,
and is often short-sighted about its own best interests. Perhaps if they'd
hired more people who weren't so fanatically determined to get into the game
industry, and who were better able to gauge changing social and cultural
trends, they wouldn't have been blindsided by the runaway success of mobile
games. Perhaps we wouldn't have had the kind of layoffs we've been seeing
over the past few years.

It's not that I'm opposed to teaching programming: I know how to program
(though I'm mediocre at it, and would not have thrived in a full-on computer
science program.) Having seen what happens when you try to send game design
students into mainline CS classes, I recommend that any program create a
separate programming track for their design students: design students often
fail these very competitive classes - good students with good ideas who
could make very, very good games - and the ones who get the most demoralized
are often those who could bring the freshest perspectives into the industry.

William Huber


On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Gregory Walek <gwalek at ccsnh.edu> wrote:


> A striking point which is not in Brenda's Blog post which was made at

> GDC (and picked up by Forbes) is how she sorts resumes:

> "If you look at my laptop, you'll see two folders of resumes - one is

> people who can code and one is the trash."

> http://blogs.forbes.com/davidewalt/2011/03/01/want-to-be-a-game-designer

> -learn-to-code/

>

> Brenda's argument is that when you are doing digital game design, you

> are designing what is to be programmed. If you have no clue to the

> underlying fundamentals then you are dead in the water. It's great that

> you can talk the talk, if you can't prove you can  walk the walk you are

> not worth looking at.

>

> The kicker here is that these comments are being said by someone whom is

> involved with the HIRING process.

>

> - Greg

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On

> Behalf Of jparker

> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 12:54 PM

> To: game_edu at igda.org

> Subject: Re: [game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

>

> Interesting rant, and she certainly has credentials.

>

> Still, I don't think that game designers are necessarily excellent

> programmers. They need to understand limits and possibilities, and to be

>

> able to communicate well with programmers. Game design is not a

> programming task, and game development is not a software business. It's

> a business that does involve software to be sure. Computer science

> programs (in my observation over only the past 12 years) produce

> relatively poor game designers, as their focus is rather different than

> that of most design fields. It makes as much sense that a CS major could

>

> design a good chair or house as design a good game. And in fact, the

> game programmers on a team traditionally have relatively little input to

>

> the creative process (again, there are certainly exceptions, and things

> are changing in some places).

>

> If a game designer has a vast knowledge of programming that could be a

> good thing. I don't believe it to be a requirement. Thus the question is

>

> 'is it worth the time needed to become an excellent programmer'? That's

> hard to answer with authority.

>

> Jim

>

> On 3/3/2011 8:38 AM, Peter Border wrote:

> > For anybody else who's stuck at home this week.

> >

> >

> http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/built-on-a-foundation-of-cod

> e-game-edu-rant/

> >

> > Peter Border

> > Game and Application Design Chairman

> > Globe University/Minnesota School of Business

> > 1401 West 76th St

> > Richfield, MN 55423

> > pborder at msbcollege.edu

> > ________________________________________

> >

> > _______________________________________________

> > game_edu mailing list

> > game_edu at igda.org

> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_edu

> >

> >

>

> --

>  From Hauptmann

> --------------------------------------------------------------------

> The inflated  style is itself a  kind of euphemism.  A mass of Latin

> words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and

> covering up all  the details. The  great enemy of  clear language is

> insincerity.                                          -George Orwell

>

> Dr. J. R. Parker,                    Digital Media Laboratory

> Professor of Play                    http://www.ucalgary.ca/~jparker

> Faculty of Fine Arts                 jparker@ ucalgary.ca

> University of Calgary                403-220-6784      AB606/AB611

>

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