[game_edu] Reasons TO teach game dev

[Adam Smith]

I think much of the apparent difficulty in teaching game development comes
from uncalibrated expectations on the part of both the student and the
teacher. To breifly oversimplify (because I'm going somewhere else with
this), students come in expecting to be able to make Portal 2 (or
equivalent) and teachers come in expecting to ramp their students up to
working with the Source SDK (or equivalent). The teachers can try to
convince the students that, oh, you won't be able to make Portal 2 without
a lot more money, friends, and experience, but if the teachers are holding
out the Source SDK as the end-of-the-year target for familiarity, the
message will be undermined.

In the history of game development, it's my understanding that the bulk of
culturally-impacting games that were made by small teams or individuals
without lifetimes of experience were actually Not built with modern
frameworks. This, no doubt, is partially a product of historical
circumstances, but it's what we've got to learn from. Because of this
realization, I have a lecture I give in the game engines class at UC Santa
Cruz that explicitly lays out a wide spectrum of platforms that people have
built games on in the past. (Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/rndmcnlly/bmoslfgemwa-spectrum-of-game-engine-architectures)
The intent is to convey that "game engine" gets used to refer to a lot of
different things, and that struggling with a major framework is neither
necessary nor sufficient game development experience to produce
culturally-impacting games (especially when you are just starting out,
small time).

In the context of a larger spectrum of things that you might build a game
from/with, the canonical Pong-in-XNA assignment is historical novelty.
Gaining fluency with tools designed for engineering at a vastly different
scale in the context of a one-quarter class is a uniquely modern challenge.
Early (individual, gamedev-inexperienced) videogame creators worked with
inherently simpler and constraint-rich abstractions that were suited to
building the non-game applications of the day, and they did it with a pace
that was slow enough to appreciate the motivation behind the design of the
abstractions they were using. Call it a liberal education if you like, but
I think the route to producing individuals capable of being leaders of a
major advance in game development practice spends more time passing through
building games on platforms at the sides of my spectrum of "game engines"
than it does giving students with hand-on experiences with today's
framework-of-the-month. This means building a videogame with an
underpowered microcontroller and an overconstrained wizard. This means
building an operating system application that just happens to be a game and
tweaking the scripting of a game made in a drag-and-drop game maker tool.
This means building a gaming-relevant library and integrating it into a
framework. This means partially cloning a given game while staying within
it's parent engine. And maybe, though potentially not at all, this means
build a partial clone of a current engine in a current framework.

/rant

Rant aside, I think several here would get something out of browsing the
slides linked above. To hit on the thread's topic, it's getting to convey
the kind of wisdom in there fuels my passion to teach gamedev. And it's the
expectation-reinforced tradition of prioritizing things that could be
learned from free tutorials online over broader knowledge that isn't
documented anywhere else that I'd cite as a reason not to teach gamedev.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 9:55 PM, <pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu> wrote:


>

> Greg,

>

> I do appreciate your insights. Both my courses are for first semester

> students. So, my comparison is based on equally novice students.

> What we wanted was a way to attract students to CS with a "learn

> to make a video game course". I don't intend to be a total Negative

> Nancy - the course is going ok, for the most part. My point is/was

> that there is really no way to avoid the conceptual complexity of

> development. Building a game is a hard task - harder in fact than

> the simple programming tasks in a traditional course. There are just

> a lot of concepts.

>

> TFP

>

> > I read what you had written below, Ted, and saw some things which threw

> up

> > red flag for me.  I hope my insights can help you.

> >

> > In regard to student frustration, I can place some of the issues on the

> > fact you are using the Platformer kit.  So on top of all the work you

> need

> > to do to have your students learn and use XNA, you then place the burden

> > of using a considerable code base. The platformer on a student's first

> > go-around is a considerable amount of code and assets to wade through.

> > Ultimately, what they produce is a product which is only a derivative of

> > the Platformer kit.

> >

> > Another red flag is that you call XNA an "Engine". Than that's flat out

> > wrong. It's a framework that is designed to be genre neutral. What I have

> > found and honed in my own XNA course is to approach XNA is as a lego set

> > for making games in C#.  So I get down to basics. I explain the game

> loop.

> > Render a texture and then Move it around. Walk them through creating a

> > Sprite Class. Get User Input. Play with Sound. Do Collision Detection.

> > This ends up being the second lab in this course. Granted, this does take

> > me 2 weeks to get through this in my Freshman Course.

> >

> > What isn't evident in your description below if your course is a first or

> > second term course. In my case XNA is a Second term course after taking a

> > standard introduction C++ course and an Introduction to Game programming

> > using Adobe Flash Platform with Actionscript. If your course is a first

> > term course, then the approach you need to take will be more like our

> Game

> > Programing Introduction course. You have to easing them in teaching

> > programming fundamentals along the way. (Here's what's a variable, Here's

> > how to generate random numbers, Here's an if statement).

> >

> > We maintain all our course files on a web server, if you (or anyone else

> > for that matter)  would like to explore our Freshman Classes and

> > curriculum, please contact me off list directly so I can provide you with

> > the information.

> >

> > Greg

> >

> > Gregory Walek

> > Professor AGGP

> > NHTI, Concord NH

> > ________________________________________

> > From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [game_edu-bounces at igda.org] on behalf of

> > pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu [pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu]

> > Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 8:40 AM

> > To: IGDA Game Education Listserv

> > Subject: Re: [game_edu] an undetermined number of reasons NOT to teach

> > game dev

> >

> > One big reason not to teach "game development" is that "it's hard".

> >

> > I teach two Freshman classes, one is "Intro Programming" a 'hard' course

> > for CS majors the other is "video game development" intended to be

> > a 'fun and easy' course to get people interested in Computer Science.

> > In the majors class I use Java in the game course I use C#/XNA.

> > It turns out that there is a lot of complexity with using a sophisticated

> > game engine. The VS/C#/XNA tools and support are great, but the power

> > comes with a price. In the regular majors class, I have them do projects

> > like "pong" or "tetris" or a simple dungeon crawler - which everyone

> > should

> > program at some time in their lives. The students in the video game

> > class do more sophisticated projects (customizing a 2D platformer) but

> > they seem more frustrated because they don't have as deep a

> > fundamental understanding of how it works. So, video game

> > development courses may scare students away from CS because of

> > the difficulty.

> >

> > The second reason not to teach "game development" is that it's

> > multidisciplinary.

> >

> > When I get Freshmen wanting a course in game

> > development I now tell them that there is no such thing. In order

> > to develop games you need strong skills in Computer Science, but

> > also in media studies (which is in our English department), Studio

> > Art & Art History, Music, and Business. (Wow - just like what we

> > used to call "a well rounded liberal education" - surprise!).

> > I help them put together a four year plan that emphasized their

> > personal strength, but informs them in the other areas. (And of

> > course, they need to build games as projects.) They wind up as well

> > prepared for the video game industry as a formal education can get them,

> > but they also are ready for other career choices. They get a real general

> > education, not a "game specific" education. So, the second reason not

> > to teach game development is that it's too narrow a topic for a good

> > formal education.

> >

> > Yours,

> >

> > Ted

> >

> >

> > Thaddeus F. Pawlicki, Ph.D.

> > Undergraduate Program Director

> > Computer Science Dept.      (585) 275-4198

> > University of Rochester       FAX (585) 273-4556

> > Rochester, NY  14627-0226   pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu

> > http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/pawlicki/

> >

> >

> > ''One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others

> may

> > despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men

> > out

> > of touch with their instinctive selves.'' - Carl Jung 1977

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >> Ian, several on your list are already in the first draft! Not worded in

> >> quite the same way, but really good to know others are on the same

> >> wavelength as me!

> >>

> >> This is going to be for #altdevblogaday and I normally just write from

> >> the

> >> hip, but my confidence took a beating last post, when I got savaged in

> >> the

> >> comments section. So thanks for the sounding board of suggestions, as I

> >> feel I'm on the right track. Yes, these lists are generalisations, but

> >> like all stereotypes the underlying truth often needs airing to be truly

> >> scrutinised.

> >>

> >> Mike

> >> _______________________________________________

> >> game_edu mailing list

> >> game_edu at igda.org

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> >>

> >

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