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Crawford Lambasts Overly Technical Approach To Games
Thanks to the IGDA for its Chris Crawford-authored 'Ivory Tower' column discussing the gap between science and the arts in videogame creation. Crawford, ever belligerent, argues: "Let's face it, the world of game design is dominated by science/engineering people; people from the arts and humanities play a secondary role... the result: a vast wasteland of cold, heartless games, technological works of genius deficient in redeeming social value." He goes on to suggest: "We need educational programs that expose students to equal amounts of technology and art. They should learn to program even as they study Michelangelo, rhetoric and recursion, algorithms and architecture." Do you think this would lead to better, more innovative, socially aware videogames?
Many of the bigger names in the industry 'are' technical, but they're also artistic, and they mainly hail from the days where only 2 people may be working on a game, forcing programming and artistic expression into one condensed job.
Chris Crawford is one of the bigger names in the industry. He wrote The Art of Computer Game Design, a seminal book on game design, in 1982, and founded the GDC in 1987.
As far as I know, his main beef is not with proven game designers like Warren Spector and Will Wright, but with the gamedev company-sponsored university classes that teach 'game design' as a mix of computer graphics and software engineering and nothing else, and the fact that that world is so completely separated from the guys talking about 'embodied virtual experiences' and 'hypertext narrative' in the English and Film Studies departments across campus.
There are plenty of people out there designing and writing games who are both creative artists and decent engineers and programmers.
... Just because you may not understand some of the real concepts behind what this author is proposing ... and yeah, frankly, the Two Cultures problem just still has not been addressed properly in the game industry.
Sure. But there are plenty of un-creative, overly technically obsessed, keeping-up-with-the-chipset-joneses-driven game 'designers' out there as well, pumping out boring dreck with their warezed 3DSMax installs, re-used Half Life engines, and 'games == war' mindset.
It wouldn't hurt to have a little more Shakespeare or Chancer in this Modern Literary Front
Think otherwise? Give an example?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It happens quite frequently, actually. I know several people in my area that make livings happily writing for videogames. You wouldn't believe the amount of creativity and sheer volume of text that goes into an RTS or an RPG... and the writers get to choose the direction the game will take, mapping out plotlines and character motivations like one would on a standard novel. They write an outline, get approval, write the lines, the lines get recorded, they re-write the lines, the lines get finalized, a section of the game gets cut, they re-write the game to compensate, etc...
Ironlore was looking for writers not too long ago, though they're moved far beyond what is written on their job page. Nival in russia is looking for writers, and Nintendo is looking for a copy editor. Then there is localization, a field that I have very little experience in (Sadly? Thankfully?).
In order to answer your question, yes, there are jobs in game development, and people make a living doing it. It may seem like a long shot, but it's probably a significantly better chance than doing anything else with that english degree. Game-specific writers with the experience and skill to tailor their writing to the needs of gameplay is a rare and valued commodity.
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