[game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

[Simon Etienne Rozner]

I think that as many here already agree as well, that a more then just fundamental understanding of programming is a very good thing for a game designer. A CS degree is don't think is a nessecity but at least a theoretical understanding of the things a computer scientist deals with on an every day basis is by all means useful information. I teach courses both for CS students and Game design students ( art as well as technical oriented degrees) ( see the courses for BAGD and BSGD on the Digipen website). In those courses I teach a programing class oriented for game designers. The focus is on understanding logical thought and implementation processes that are directly as well as indirectly relevant to game design. On top of that I try to help the students to develop a feeling of what is possible to code given constraibts of time, manpower and money( that one in theory, since we don't have actual money in the classroom). It should help them to understand how an inefficient design affects the production, how to go about changing it to something that yields the same result but can be accomplished faster and easier and gain at the same time important foundation programmig skills to be able to create their own prototypes and simple games.

Although I am not a programmer and come from an art background, understanding the limitations of the system i design on, the intricacies of code structures and logic flow of programs have been immensly valuable for me. I think it is a mistake for any aspiring gake designer or veteran to brush programing aside as unimportant and a waste of time. It is essential knowledge to our craft, but don't need to be computer scientists. We must well understand though what it is they do. On that note, you should also well understand what your artists do and everyone else on the team.

On Mar 8, 2011, at 18:45, Mike Reddy <Mike.Reddy at newport.ac.uk> wrote:


> I dabbled with a game programming summer course last year, and know that Ian Schreiber and I discussed him (us?) running a game programming summer course, building on his game design and game balance courses in previous years. Any designers reading this, or those who think that Brenda has a point, might consider setting aside a few hours a week for the Summer, if they want to dip into programming this year. Do you think that there would be interest in this?

> 

> Personally, I think that comments about systems thinking and the creativity of constraint are excellent enablers.

> 

> Mike

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