Design Educations Under Criticism

Via GameSetWatch, a story at CollegeNews.org about the crass reasons higher learning institutions have for offering game design courses. From the article: "Video game design as a college major? It's yet another sign of the coming of the apocalypse. Schools of higher learning are simply cashing in on a fad that is destructive to society. Electronic Arts, the nation's largest game maker, has led the way in encouraging ivy-stained institutions to teach the design of such games as Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Mortal Kombat. Last year, the company contributed millions of dollars to establish a three-year master of fine arts program in 'interactive entertainment' at USC." More on GamePolitics.

Comments

new medium

[uberjoe]

Didn't they say the same thing about people getting film degrees in the last century?

That's one terrible picture.

[abramovs]

The author's smirk (not to mention the terrible logic) makes me think this type of article is just done for attention.

Does this really make sense?

[nekoes]

Does it really make sense to say that teaching game design is wrong because most games are violent? Wouldn't it make more sense to base an argument fighting game design courses based upon games' infancy as a medium, and its potential lack of academic value?

It just doesn't seem real logical to say that game design courses must be bad because games today promote violence. That'd be kind of like saying that we shouldn't teach film courses because movies and television are too violent.

Wouldn't it be a good thing to offer game design courses, because that'd provide chances to teach potential designers responsibility and ethics?

Noone wants "designers"

[KDR_11k]

Seriously, what good is a game design degree, anyway? The graduates from one semester would already be more designers than the whole industry needs. What they DO need is grunts. Coders, artists, sound guys, etc. The guys who don't think* but do. Most people who say "I want to make games" think they get to decide what games get made. You only need one or two of those on a team, compared to 50+ grunts on larger teams.

Plus, a degree isn't worth much in the games industry anyway, your skill and especially past experience (often a required number of shipped titles for major companies!) are what's important. Many graduates are worse than the self-taught people. Most jobs with degrees require stuff selftaughts don't even know the name of (how many selftaught coders can do code verification?) so the degree makes sense but the processes involved in games is nothing your average selftaught doesn't know about (or, in case of complex coding, a computer science degree won't teach you).

In the no-degree-required positions it's even recommended to have a degree that's not game related so you can take another high-paying job if you get burned out (or pissed off) by the games industry. If you only have a games degree the rest of your life would involve asking customers whether they'd like fries with that.

*=Yes, I know all of these jobs require thinking. I mean they don't think up the game, just its implementation.

Re:Noone wants "designers"

[Rac3r5]

good points and I agree with pretty much all of them,

however a number of ppl who obtain a degree in one area, don't necessairly stay true to that area. Think of the number of fine art ppl that graduate each year, and how many of them actually get a job doing art? Isn't it better that they get a degree in an art that has relevance rather than just some general arts program?

How Cute..

[kizzbizz]

Aww, how cute. A political science professor is trying to make an argument about the psychology of children and how they respond violence in videogames. Any highschooler could tell from a cursory readthrough of this article that the professor is merely trying to push forward his elietist views. It is obvious he sees videogames as nothing more than a barbaric fufilment of primal passions, and some sort of scourge to higher society that needs to be eliminated "for the children". This reeks of the high-society garbage that many prominent schools are trying to distance themselves from.

I can only imagine that the writer of this article would think the saga of Carl Johnson, in book form, would be a literary marvel cronicling the rise to power of a disenfranchised African-American.

You said what now?

[FLEB]

the crass reasons higher learning institutions have for offering game design courses

Wha'? There was nothing here even hinting at "reasons". The article was a (somewhat disjointed) opinion rant: "1.) Video games are violent. 2.) Video games are popular. 3.) Schools are starting video game design courses (and should not)" (although not specifically in that order).

This article makes weak connections at best between violent video games and the detriment a game design program would have. The title of the article, the statement of the article, and the supporting points in the article seem to come from three totally different places. It's kind of a lukewarm ADD-rambling grumble. There might be a defensible position here, but I can't make it out.

In short, "This is news?"

Game Design in College

[under_score]

This is a complex problem. First off, funding for institutions of higher learning comes from a multitude of sources. Colleges need to attract funding and in order to do that they need to attract students. In order to attract students, they need to create programs that are attractive to students. In Canada, colleges and universities are publicly funded and their funding is largely based on the number of students. This competition for students is unfortunate because students who are 19 years old tend to be relatively short-sighted about what constitutes a good education.

Secondly, I believe almost any course of study can become excellent education depending on the teachers/instructors/professors. My father is probably the best professor one could ever have: his background as a professional fine artist combined with experience in education and volunteer activities, plus his interest in philosophy and science makes him singularly capable of delivering an excellent course regardless of the subject matter. He is constantly creating new and better methods of instruction for his courses that he teaches at Keyano College. Incidentally, he has been investigating the creation of a game design program at the college... because it is cutting edge in terms of the arts!

I personally strongly feel that if I had focused on a purely technical or vocational path in my education I would not be nearly as far along in my career as I am. I studied sociology, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, French, Russian, marketing and accounting in addition to my core computer science and mathematics classes. The benefits of these classes have become clear 15 years later as I am doing management consulting for Agile methods. If a program is going to be about game design, make sure that it includes a diversity of relevent subject matter such as gender studies, theatre, story-writing, linguistics, adult educational theory, etc. in addition to the technical stuff.

Re:And Why Not?

[buffer-overflowed]

Chances are you generally don't want a mechanical engineer(my dad is a mechanical engineer[MS], you don't want him doing this, trust me) doing repairs on your car, you'd probably prefer a mechanic. And the inverse is true for say, designing an engine. Same principle applies to software.