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Students Help Design Game Curriculum
J writes "In contrast to current stories about publishers creating their own design courses comes news from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Their new "Video Game Design & Development" Concentration was the cover
story of LaLouisiane, The University's
magazine. This concentration resulted from a collaboration between the Computer Science faculty and members of the Student Video Game Alliance, a
student group that had been tackling game development on their own time. The
first Video Game Design and Development course began this Spring semester."
Wow! I guess this means the video games generation is coming of age. It's quite a pleasure seeing the art form that is video games flourishing and taking its place alongside other art forms. I wonder if the Renaissance felt a little like this, except for electricity and indoor plumbing.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 2000-2003, and majored in Entertainment Software Development, a concentration that I designed myself. Many universities will allow you to create a custom major that is NOT a General Studies degree, and this can be an excellent alternative. It will allow you to take a heavily cross-curricular schedule, which is critical in a good game design degree. Here are some of the classes I took:
Media Violence I & II
Computer Game Programming
Software Engineering
Computer Animation I & II
Cinematic Techniques
Film Critique
Creative Writing
Medieval English Classics
I still believe that the best game programming education is the one you do in your spare time, but you can cater college to help support your outside interests! Do not settle when you can have more!
Hey man, congratulations on dropping the course. I'm still in it hoping to just get a good grade to bring my GPA up. But yeah, you're right, the course doesn't seem to have any direction. You still interested in making a game? I've got one I've been working on for some time. And I'm not in the SVGA, 'cause I've seen the work they produce. Oh yeah, I'm Duncan. Drop me a line sometime at duncanbojangles @ cox-internet.com if you're ever interested.
The book used for this course is being judged by it's cover. It's really not that bad. The big problem with books in game dev is that there are none out there aimed at teaching people in an academic setting. Yes, win32 does suck, but the book does a good job of hiding those calls in objects. Using SDL would be nice, but it by itself doesn't do a whole lot of good since you still need to build a game engine on top of it. The University doesn't have the resources to do that and I don't know of any books that cover teaching how to build a game engine with SDL. If you have a better book, please share it because I've been looking.
Taking this course when you already have a significant amount of game experience is like taking a beginning CS course when you already know the basics. But for most people in the course, they don't have that experience.
GameMaker rocks. Sure, the games the class has made in it are "flash like", but Picasso didn't just start painting masterpieces. The point of using it is to get people to learn *The Process* of developing games. The technical side is not being overlooked, but for the limited amount of courses we have for gamedev, I feel it's the best approach.
People can discount the members of SVGA for not producing games up to their standards, but it exists so that people of any skill level can get together with others to produce games. There have been troubles with trying to accomondate different skill levels in the past, but it's something we're always trying to fix. (Assuming people tell us what's wrong) Regardless, without the countless hours the men and women in this group have spent working with faculty and going through red tape, the curriculum and course would not be a reality. I'd have rather spend that time playing Unreal Tournament, but I didn't because I want those that come after me to not be as lost in trying to start in game development as I was.
-J
Founder, SVGA Lafayette