Good Morning, Professor Romero

The Man With The Green Hair writes: "According to this story over at The Dallas Morning News, John Romero and Tom Hall both formally of ION Storm, will be teaching a class next semester at The University of Texas at Dallas where they will be instructing computer science majors on the finer points of game programming and design."

Comments

Come on now.

[Murdock037]

I go to an art school. Our studio professors are all working artists, and inevitably in every semester, somebody will ask to see a sample of the professor's work. Oftentimes you'll see a very good, very impressive body of work, typically the product of the sort of values and ideas the person is trying to impress upon his or her students.

In my experience, though, there have been a few teachers who have shown work that is thourougly underwhelming or even out-and-out weak. And from that point on, it's impossible to learn from the person, because you just don't respect what they do.

I imagine this will be the same in this programming class for anybody that's played Daikatana.

There are no fundamental, time-honored principles to game design, because it hasn't been around long enough to establish the same sort of rules you find in, say, graphic design. So in a class like this, you'll be entirely dependent on what the teacher has to say. There really won't be an authoritative accompanying text from which you could choose to learn instead of the professor.

All of Slashdot is going to post here that Daikatana sucks, and all of Slashdot is right. If John Romero knew anything about good game design, he would have taken the seemingly unlimited resources afforded him and been able to produce a good game.

I never played Anachronox, although I read that it was very good. Maybe Tom Hall's got some worthwhile things to say. But is there anybody out there that really respects the work that John Romero's done since he left id? The class is obviously the university's way of getting some press (and, in turn, enrollment and tuition) by taking advantage of a celebrity name, regardless of worth.