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On The Muse Of The Videogame
Thanks to the IGDA for its 'Ivory Tower' article discussing whether the creative training for game developers is being taught alongside the technical specifics in university and other educational programs. The article argues: "Vocationally-focused university programs and trade schools have jumped on the opportunity to supply the next set of technically trained personnel for the game industry... but who will supply the next set of visionaries and artists?" The author goes on to suggest: "In large part, education for the game industry is a predictably useful business... what we need in the game industry are technically competent developers, artists, and designers who are fundamentally versed in the rich subtleties of human experience." Can this kind of game design vision be formally taught?
But can you teach someone how to be creative? No, you can't. People that have absolutely no artistic aptitude will still suck after 4 years of art school. At some point you have to have some innate ability.
My previous college, the University of California, Irvine, was considering offering a degree in Video Game Design* in the school of the humanities, next to the department which handled Film Studies. This degree, which had wide support on campus, would mark one the first long-term collaboration between the arts, humanities, and programming departments, and received the necessary approval, was personally terminated by the chancellor due to the "inappropriateness" of the material.
Apparently Video Games are an inappropriate field of study for a system which gives out degrees in "Film Studies" "Television Studies" and "The 70's." Currently the only non-technical college in California offering a degree in Video Games is USC, a college in the heart of Los Angeles known for catering to the job market. It is also one of a very few in the nation.
How are we to educate upcoming designers about what works and doesn't work if we can't even have basic investigation into the problem through remedial college courses? Why is this major part of the human condition not worthy of study? Until such a time as we have departments of video games in the school of humanities, we won't be preparing people properly for lives as game designers and we won't be preparing people to be intelligent consumers of games. I may not have become a movie critic, but film studies was a valuable course to take to become an educated member of this society. Every time I have to explain a reference to a "magic mushroom," "respan point," "100 coins," or other things that are accepted videogame shorthand, I wonder how people can successfully avoid this very large part of their society. When I have to explain to people what Pac Man was and why it is relevant to our consumerist society, I really want to reach out and slap that Chancellor.
We're never going to be able to educate people until we have a little basic pure research to work from. We're never going to get our pure research until the stigma of gaming is erased.
BTW, while most gaming companies say on job boards that they're looking for 5+ years of experience and 2 shipped titles, most positions are filled either from inside or from word-of-mouth from known developers and their friends with much, much less experience. But even if you don't meet the requirements, if you have something to show that is "really cool," you will get the job. If anything the gaming industry is suffering from too little experience related to too fast of an expansion, not too much. The inexperienced designers I've worked with have tended to roll over when bad ideas were suggested by their colleagues or good ideas were shot down. The experienced developers tended to stand their ground more, and more wisely.
*I had already graduated when this went down, so my information is primarily second hand and the little bits that were reported in the larger news media. If anyone knows something more up-to-date, please let us know.
The ______ Agenda
No one has looked into /why/ pacman was so popular...
No one? Try reading Scott Miller's The Genius of Pac Man
There has been no formal study of games beyond their technical specifications.
No formal study, perhaps, but there have been several important game designers who have a lot to say on games beyond the technical specs (in fact, just about every book on Game Design -- about 8 have been published in the last two years alone -- only give lip service to technical specifications). Chris Crawford, in particular, has pretty much made a career giving lectures throughout the world on this very subject. You can read some of it here, or read his books.
His game design book actually went into the psychology of creativity, and he even had a chapter that listed the books he suggested to open your mind and give you enough of a creative background to draw from (including history books, myths, a book on "how things work", etc.)
There's a lot of discussion out here on the internet involving the non-technical aspects of game design, and if you know the right places to look, even amongst established game developers. They might not qualify as formal studies, but I'd give more weight on their analyses than "formal studies" anyway. Besides, if you want formal studies on what works in video games, start researching psychology, particularly behaviorism. There's a wealth of information in that field alone which would help game design tremendously.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
Yes, actually your information is definitely out of date and inaccurate. UC Irvine has actually launched, in some capacity, the program you were talking about in collaboration with UC San Diego. Information can be found here.