[game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

[William Huber]

I think the reason I am responding so strongly to Brenda's rant/post is that
she doesn't just call for procedural literacy, basic programming ability, or
a broad understanding of software engineering principles.

She specifically said that a CS-level of familiarity with code is required.
This is analogous to telling magazine editors not to hire writers without
degrees in linguistics! What worries me is that panicked students will
enroll in CS classes, fail, and go elsewhere - and the people who will then
make up the industry will have less of a background in things like art and
design history and theory, in literature and history, in anthropology and
psychology, in the huge range of disciplines that can unexpectedly make for
very interesting game designs. Teaching a couple of classes on Processing,
Java (the classes she derides in her post/rant!) is probably a good idea;
computation for expression would make a great track for a program.
Traditional CS classes, which are often designed to weed out students in
impacted CS majors: no. It is, again, telling, that she never had tot take
one to pursue her career. It would be nice if she could extend the benefits
of perspective from her own experience to be willing to take some chances on
incoming generations of designers.

William Huber
Researcher, Software Studies Initiative @ Calit2
Doctoral candidate, Ph.D. Program in Art & Media History
Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego



On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 12:23 PM, Katrin Becker <becker at minkhollow.ca> wrote:


>  On 3/3/2011 12:56 PM, William Huber wrote:

>

> How much do you think Jonathan Ive knows about the technology in the iPod,

> the iPad, the MacBook Pro, etc.?

>

>  William Huber

>

>   This is a common kind of problem:

>

> What does someone in discipline X need to know about discipline Y if they

> are going to do work that is situated in both domains?

>

> It is one of the questions that really intrigues me and it’s a hard one to

> answer. It gets exponentially more complex when we are talking about

> something that combines many disciplines, like Serious Game Design, which is

> game design, but I'd say one that has the potential to be even more complex

> than entertainment game design.

>

> Suppose we were trying to teach people how to design educational videogames

> for example (a subject very close to my heart). I know that my 30 years in

> CS (and that includes programming and systems analysis) gives me a

> perspective that someone with degrees only in Ed and EdTech can’t possibly

> have. I also know that my 30 years of trying to teach (thousands of) people

> something hard gives me a perspective on teaching that a career academic in

> Education can’t have. But we can’t expect potential educational game

> designers to go away and spend 30 years doing what I did. So the question

> is, “Which of those things I know/learned are important for others to learn

> in order to do this well?”

>

> THIS is a really hard question. People have a tendency to want to force

> everyone who is doing a job like theirs to go through the same things that

> they had to go through (it's the "Do unto others what was done unto you."

> rule).  SOME of what I learned in my CS degrees and teaching career is

> useful to me when it comes to designing games, but not all of it. Knowing

> how programs and computers work is important in digital game design. Knowing

> how to prove that an algorithm is O(n) is not. What we need to do is spend

> more time figuring out what parts are important to know and then look at

> ways of helping people learn that without necessarily making them get four

> degrees.

>

> --

> *Katrin Becker, PhD* *(sent from Mink Hollow)*

> *President, Mink Hollow Media <http://minkhollowmedia.ca/>*

> *Adjunct Professor* School of Interactive Arts and Technology<http://www.siat.sfu.ca/>,

> Simon Fraser University <http://www.sfu.ca/> (BC, Canada)

> E-mail: becker at minkhollow.ca HomePage: http://minkhollow.ca/becker Blog:

> http://minkhollow.ca/beckerblog

> *In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary

> act. ~George Orwell *

>

> _______________________________________________

> game_edu mailing list

> game_edu at igda.org

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

>

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_edu/attachments/20110303/beea5fb4/attachment.html>