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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?
Can this kind of game design vision be formally taught?
I don't see why not. Schools teach all kinds of other creative outlets from painting to music to writing. As long as the student is ready to learn and willing to be criticized, he can learn an awful lot.
To some extent good game design can be taught. Why do you think so many games are quite a bit like other games? Some things just work right, some don't. Teaching that much is simple.
;) )) to the most complex wargames and RPG's, if the game doesn't feel right it will not work. That isn't something you can teach. Hell, I could probably get 20 different answers from as many people as to what the 'feel' of a game is.
;) ). There isn't any room for the people that have no experience. Go look at some game-related job boards. Everyone is looking for someone with 5+ years of experience and at least two shipped titles... how many people like that are there in the industry, and how many of that subset can design games, and how many of THAT subset can design GOOD games? Until the industry at large settles down and looks outside of the known for answers, they're screwed.
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.
What makes a good game is a designer that knows from the beginning what the game is supposed to feel like. From the simplest puzzle games (Tetris, Puzzle Bobble (Frozen Bubble
One of the biggest problems is that the industry is getting so large so fast that companies don't have room for risk. They only want to hire people they know can do the right things (which is why John Romero has to hire himself to get a job
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Is that there are so many game developers nowadays that are super succesful despite completely lacking any brains whatsoever when it comes to good design and human experience that it wont matter. The market, especially the PC, PS2, XboX and GBA markets, are flooded with crap games nowadays. Many of these games turn a profit despite being total trash. Until the game players force game makers to step up the quality nobody will need this training to get in the industry. And while the hardcore of us know which are good and which are bad, even some are guilty of buying crap games, like progress quest MMOs/RPGs and movie license games. When gamers stop buying into such unoriginal crapass games developers will go out and start trying to make quality.
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....Creative Writing? A good writer can create a storyline that is fluid and can conform to the concept of a video game, and most games nowadays involve a story of some sort.
That said, I don't see why it couldn't be taught. Hire a few former or current game developers who are well-known for their creative talents, write up a textbook that lays out the problems with creative game design, elements that make such designs hard, etc. Slap a high-level course name like Game Design 490 on it, and you're done.
However, there's an obvious difference between Game Design and Graphic Art Design, so there would probably need to be more than one course.
I think it would be important to list the limitations and risks of such designs, though; making an innovative game often involves a lot more effort because you may have to code an entire engine yourself, or make any number of unique decisions about a game, rather than say, making a mod, which could cost you if you're a small-time developer. Still, I'm surprised this isn't a course somewhere.
The humanity subjects (i.e. English, the arts) are important if you want to make an innovative game. The important thing to remember is that their are no new ideas, virtually everything has been done before by storytellers/authors in the past; humans have been around for thousands of years, and there are only so many ideas. The way to make an "innovative" game concept is merely to recycle the best ideas from the past. You are not likely to read much literature in a programming class; therefore, a company could be composed entirely of brilliant programmers and still make awful games. You need to have people trained in the humanities in order to make a successful game
Still Rampant, Wowbagger
I second this.
Usually, people writing movies & tv shows are different from the people directing or producing. Of course, there are exceptions, but even in those cases, there are a lot of different people doing a lot of different work.
Why should the special effects people be versed in writing a story? Should the advertising department know how to code? Let everyone do what they're best at, whether it's art design, programming or writing stories.
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It may seem blindingly obvious, but the best way to go about getting new ideas is to come into contact with those of other people(regardless of their field) and then link them up to make something original.
Given that many people today haven't ever touched old games, not even the most classic, the most basic and revolutionary of them, I think a good start to a designer's curriculum would be based primarily on seminar classes where the students investigate older works within, say, a given platform or time frame, and then discuss and write on them. As the field progresses, a more standardized pattern of study would emerge as we better recognize the most important aspects - the alternative being years of toiling away at emulators and playing everything in the library of each and every 8-bit platform from A to Z as I have done - or tried to do; the 16-bit era I have only slightly trodden into, and while I've tried to keep up with modern stuff, it's hard to do in any depth since games tend to get much bulkier as time goes on - but for the time being what's necessary is a program that turns out designers who have a clear view of what's been tried before, and how it has/hasn't worked. Even if they don't come up with anything new, they should become competent at identifying some successful forms of gameplay and avoiding classic pitfalls. That's the whole point of their training, after all; to learn game design at a level that average people wouldn't reach on their own.