What They Don't Teach You At Game Design School

The Guardian Gamesblog has a piece wondering out loud at what they do and don't teach in game design courses. From the article: "Games development requires expertise, and hiring graduates fast-tracks game development. Arguably, the release from the burden of training should allow developers to create new technologies. The industry has encouraged the university games courses, sending development kits to departments and staff to seminars. Since Abertay's flagship programme launched almost nine years ago, 165 games-related degrees have sprung up across the UK, a trend equalled in other countries around the world."

Comments

Why would they?

[TeaQuaffer]

College != Trade school.

Uh, is this guy for real?

[blanktek]

While I have no personal experience of working in the industry or attending one of the courses, I tell people to get a degree in English literature, psychology, world religions, history, creative writing or philosophy.

Would you like fries with that? Seriously, I do have respect for these fields. However, this is not the type of education good for the majority of computer game design. If you have a talent for 3D art, go for it if you can face the competition. How about computer science? Duh! Math and physics are good too. Then again, why was some random blog post on front page again?

Re:Uh, is this guy for real?

[Morpeth]

"Philosophy isn't something you write about, its something you experience. If you need to read philosophy, you're missing the whole point."

Utter nonsense. Actually you're missing the whole point as you're obviously of the philosophy as "touchy-feely goobley gook" mindset, and I doubt ever took a single real course in the discipline. Have your read "Being and Time" by Heidegger, "Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzche, or say "Critique of Pure Reason" by Kant? Obviously not.

"If you need to write about philosophy, you just like to stroke your own ego."

More nonsense. Would you say this about someone publishing a math theorem, an archaeological discovery, or say some new genetic sequence? I doubt it. Why is writing about philosophy (as academic field, like epistemology and phenomenology, not the meditative pop culture bullsh*t you're talking about) any different? And don't forget most early philosophers like the Greeks were also scientists, mathematicians, political theorists, and they even took the first shot at what we would call psychology. But I guess their work was just stroking their egos too? Whatever.

My Take

[th1ckasabr1ck]

"I am often asked what kind of course a prospective games designer should enrol in. While I have no personal experience of working in the industry or attending one of the courses, I tell people to get a degree in English literature, psychology, world religions, history, creative writing or philosophy. This is echoed by a number of long-term jobbing designers I have spoken to, none of whom has a games-related degree."

For what it's worth, I'm a game programmer and the designers that I've worked with have almost all come from other walks of game development life. They start out as QA guys, artists, assistant producers, programmers, etc. and then transition over to design.

I'm still not exactly sold on these game development majors yet. If you want to program games, get a CS degree. If you want to be a game artist, study art. If you want to be a level designer, make levels. If you want to comvince a company to make your next grand idea for a game, well then good luck.

While you're getting your degree, work on game-related projects on the side. It worked for me.

And your point is...?

[kaldrenon]

This article certainly raises a good question, but fails to answer it. If the game development programs offered at universities don't teach people how to design games, then what should be done about it?

The author says that "in most creative industries, the people from the outside have the brightest ideas and the cleverest approaches to solving problems." In effect, what he's saying is that for game development to flourish, the degree programs offered for game development should be ignored. Seems a little contrary to me.

Along with the fundamentals of programming, the core of a Computer Science degree, a game developer could need countless different references and sources, depending on the projects he intends to develop. A person making a football game, for example, needs to know more about sports, physics, and physiology, depending on the intended realism, whereas a person making an insightful and thought-provoking RPG with a deep storyline would want to do cultural, historical, or anthropological studies.

Because of the vast variety of secondary resources needed to develop certain different games, and because no one can really teach innovation, I say that all a game development degree can teach in order to assure its usefulness are the fundamentals of programming in modern video game design. A few more electives than other courses would certainly not be amiss, but learning to program is the only thing every game developer needs. Everything else depends on their objectives.

Re:who really designs the games? and why?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Silly me. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we just designed games because we >wanted to. We didn't even have degrees. Heck, most of us didn't even have computers.

>And when we made computer games, we usually had to teach ourselves the programming >languages from obscure manuals written by engineers who were more interested in >designing circuits than in writing manuals.

You try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe you.

Re:What?

[Jacius]

Maybe Gamers are the worst people to make games. I don't know. You might could actually blame games for that, a first in my book.

Loving to play games doesn't necessarily mean you are good at creating games. And it's not just this way with games.

Just because someone liked Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies doesn't mean that they could have done a good job directing them. And that tubby, dancing, shirtless football fan in the 5th row could not replace his favorite team's quarterback with a moment's notice. And, unfortunately, just because it's fun to hear about some new scientific discovery, doesn't mean you could have discovered it yourself.

But that doesn't mean that there is a negative correlation, i.e. "no one who is interested in something has skill in it". Evidence suggests otherwise. Peter Jackson obviously has great interest in film, or he wouldn't be directing. Most of the best video game creators have a lot of interest in video games, too.

I'd summarize the situation like this:

• Being interested in something doesn't mean you are good at it.
• But, it helps.
• It's not the only thing you must have in order to be good, though.

So, looking at video games:

1. Not everyone who is interested in video games is good at making them.
2. But, most of the people who are good at making them are also interested in them.

There is something that the great creators have, which the ordinary fans don't have. Let's call it creativity. The article says that creativity isn't being taught in game-design degree programs, and so you should get a liberal arts degree instead. But if creativity isn't being taught to game-design students, that doesn't mean that it cannot possibly be taught.

I myself am working towards an AAS in 3d Computer Animation, and there has been a very heavy artistic emphasis; some of the required courses are photography, acting, film appreciation, and sculpture. There is another degree program entitled "3d Computer Graphics Programming", which covers the more technical aspect, and is lighter on the "artsy fartsy" stuff; some of the required courses are C programming, data structures, and OpenGL programming. There are several classes that overlap between the two programs, though, and thus interaction and collaboration between the two types of students.

So it seems to me that the problem is not that the game degree program is mostly technical. The problem is that there is no corresponding art-focused program. What they should do is rename the technical program into game engineering, and create a new program, the true game design degree program. Games do need code monkeys, but they also need prima donna artistes. If you only have the one, you get tech demos. If you only have the other, you get paint splatters and jars of urine.

But if you have both... then, you get truly great stuff: tech demos where you make paint splatters and jars of urine using a built-in fluid dynamics engine!