[game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

[Dan]

I guess it sort of depends what role is ascribed to a "game designer."  In
the magazine analogy, I tend to see the designer as the Editor, so my
analogy would be that she's advocating for programs designed to get students
jobs as editors include a strong emphasis on linguistics. 

 

While I'm still processing her article and not entirely sure where I come
down on what makes up the exact "mix" of programming within a design
program, I wonder if anyone would argue the reverse.That an art program is
hampered by too much emphasis on the media and tools, and that by culling
out the ones who can't handle that curriculum we are removing some
innovation from the industry. Ultimately, for me the issue comes down to
where she states in the article that given the choice between a good
designer without programming skills and a good designer with programming
skills, she always picks the latter.

 

I have a pile of resumes from students who are solid designers and coders,
and other things being equal, a solid designer who is just a solid designer
is going to lose, because the field is that competitive and because there
are that many talented students out there. From a purely practical
standpoint, students need something extra to be competitive.  

 

I think this makes a pretty strong case.students need something extra to
stand out when they apply. Maybe it doesn't have to be programming, but
certainly Brenda makes a good argument for it. 

 

  --Dan Carreker

  _____  

From: William Huber [mailto:whuber at ucsd.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 12:42 PM
To: becker at minkhollow.ca; IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

 

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


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