[game_edu] Ph.D. in Digital Game Design

[Lee Sheldon]

Mike, I agree that MOST students fresh out of MOST undergraduate game programs will not have the experience in professional development for my image of a maker/studier/teacher PhD. Maturity and focus are also of concern at that age. However, part of the necessary preparation for working in the field at any good game program must contain multiple chances to experience a professional game development environment through internships (paid or unpaid) and co-ops. These are several months in duration, a reasonable length of time to gain some experience at least in how games are put together and game production teams function.

Add to that the additional opportunities available at the MS level, and I suspect exemplary, talented students might well be ready for PhD primetime.

The other issue is that in any PhD program, you'll be lucky to get real-world experience as a step toward the PhD. It's not the way the process is set up (for good or ill). 


>> I suspect strongly that presenting at GDC or the like wouldn't particularly impress a tenure committee. 


Actually that is changing, just as requiring tenurable professors is changing. The academy needs some way to judge performance from someone like me who makes commercial games, writes books, and speaks at industry conferences (Although I've branched out into academic conferences, I do not as a rule submit abstracts etc. In fact I was part of my first submission for the upcoming Games, Learning and Society conference.)

My best example about the spanners someone like me throws into the tenure process, was while I was at IU. They first tried to compare my game sales to published academic books and papers. Bad choice for them. Good for me. Since games typically sell from the hundreds of thousands into the millions, not quite the reach of your typical MIT Press book. I did help to move them beyond that unfair comparison: quality vs. quantity and so on.

List of criteria: agreed. And yes, there is no real video game criticism in the classical sense of the word. Good to shy away from that!

Lee

Lee Sheldon
Associate Professor
Department of Communication and Media
Co-Director Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute