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?

Comments

So what he wants is....

[MajikMan]

...a whole world of geniuses?

Not everyone can come close to being able to focus on that many areas - the literary/artistic education people are given in this country (at least) is laughable, and there are people who want to add onto all of this?

Why not just get more people who have the artistic skills and prowess more involved in the game making process? Why do companies let engineers write game plots? As I see it, the reason there isn't more redeeming social value in gaming is because no one involved in the creative side of game development seems to be good enough to tie it in.

It's a bit silly to try making everyone into an artist/writer/director as well as a mathematician/engineer/programmer; most people's minds just don't deal that well with one area or the other (right brain/left brain dominance I suppose).

I'll be graduating in a couple of years with a degree in English, and hope to make a name for myself through writing, but the last thing on my mind is getting a job writing video game stories or working on development. I'd love the chance to do that kind of work, but it's nothing I've heard of happening lately.

Not quite

[DarkGamer20X6]

As a programmer, I'm a little insulted. This guy seems to ignore that many of today's game designers do not come from a highly technical background,...at least not as technical as the programmers. Furthermore, much of the design either comes from or is altered by the producers. That means that much of the content is swayed by people that don't necessarily have 'any' technical background; they're business people, not programmers or software engineers.

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. However, these people are the exception, and the majority of people who influence the content of video games at this point have little to no technical knowledge of the games they're creating.

The author makes a good point, and more artistic creativity wouldn't hurt the creation of games. I'm just not sure he targeted the problem correctly.

Re:Too techincal?????

[Daetrin]

I agree almost 100%. I think you might be maligning the designers a bit, i've known some very good ones, some of whom have done a lot of creative work in other fields before working on video games. Sure there are designers who aren't very good, but there are programmers and artists who aren't very good either.

However your basic point is right on. In every game company i've worked at more than two thirds of the people have very little in depth tehnical experience. The designers can write simple scripts and use spreadsheets to balance stats, and the artists can use the appropriate art tools, but (on average) they know very little about programing, technical constraints, or the data pipeline.

There's always some artist who insists on exporting art files in the wrong way, even after you've told them three or more times that it will break stuff. The designers often make similar mistakes with the scripts, and frequently their first request for a new feature is totally unfeasible, requiring a programmer to come talk to them about what's possible and how to integrate that with what they want.

Unless the three companies i've worked at have been freak occurances, most game companies have non-technical people doing the art and design. If the design isn't good, either the designers just aren't very good, the programmers weren't able to implement it right (in which case the problem is not enough focus on tech, not too much focus) or as someone else suggested, management decided to get involved for whatever strange reason management always seems to have for screwing things up.