Can I assume that's the royal "we"? Careful with those pronouns there, Sparky. Speak for yourself, not all academia.
Wait.. Oh my...declarative sentences claiming to speak to a whole community...devisive statements...an Academic Troll? What an oxymoron!
Listen: no one is saying you have to write a game yourself. But then writing a paper about video games and then claiming you never want it read in the soiled hands of developers is pretty self-defeating, isn't it?
That outlook is pretty dismal, and far too ivory-tower-escapist for my tastes.
We need to take into account that video games are still a genre in infancy, unlike poetry which has been around and studied since Aristotle. Think more about Sergie Eisenstein at the birth of cinema. He made stirring films that showed knowledge of theory, and he wrote highly influential theory that he couldn't possibly have arrived at if he hadn't been trying to make films.
We have no interest in designing better video games, by and large. Academic study took a turn away from those kinds of concerns in the 60s, and hasn't ever really gone back.
Whether that was a right turn or not is still very much in debate. And I would argue that this early in the game, there is no need to retreat to irrelevancy just yet. Though they may not be making games, the ideas that academics create are going significantly shape video games (at least I hope so).
To return to your analogy, shouldn't an MA have knowledge of such things as stanzas and rhyme schemes? Won't the MFA write better poems if informed by ideas of symbolism or archetypes? I'm not saying they aren't two different fields, but they most definitely need to communicate.
Anyway, aren't you just the least bit excited about influencing a whole field in its nascence. Just a little bit?
Yes, Doom and Quake are *just* like Shakespeare's works.
Prince Hamlet enters, torn by guilt, grief, jealousy, and vengeance, and soliloquizes with stirring poetry about his problems. Then he proceeds to launch heavy artillery at Queen Gertrude and Claudius.
"O that this too too solid flesh would melt
'Neath the heat of a Plasma rifle blast."
Wow, even better than the original!
Why does there need to be such a hard-and-fast division between developers and academics?
I'm a member of a rare breed: I'm writing my thesis on games, so I'm familiar with all the academic literature on them. but I also code my own games. Without my coding background, I would never be able to analyze games in the same depth.
Most of the literature out there would be vastly improved if these researchers had even a cursory knowledge of programming. Instead, most of the academics are still clinging to what they're familiar with, like literary and film theory, instead of apporaching games on their own grounds. Procedural logic, artificial intelligence issues, and emergent behavior are all ingored by most academics in favor of more comfortable facets like narrative or visuals. Honestly, how many academic articles do we need on Lara Croft's breasts?
The Georgia Tech program mentioned in the article has exactly the right idea. For most of the classes, assignments are split between theory *and* production.
There's a lot of talk about complexity flying around in this discussion, but I don't think that's what the girl-gamer problem is. A lot of games, especially FPS games, are genuinely difficult if you aren't used to that style of movement.
A friend of mine tried to get me to play Halo recently, but there are 8 buttons, and three joysticks. I eventually got the hang of moving with that, but before I did, he had been killing me for half an hour. It wasn't much fun, and I'm not inclined to try it again. There are women (like me) who don't enjoy feeling stupid when playing games. Boys, though, grow up playing this type of game, and so they start off with some competency.
Maybe women who haven't been playing games for 16+ years like games where they can be competent within a few sessions. If you look at The Sims, online games, adventure games, and others that are popular with large percentages of fem-gamers, they all have intuitive controls that can be mastered quickly. Not only do these appeal to women, but also lots of men who aree new to gaming. To get more women, don't make women's games, make games that newbies can play!
Side note: Am I the only one who wants to fly into a homicidal rage every time I hear "Barbie" mentioned in connection to women gamers? And they say women aren't violent.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait.. Oh my...declarative sentences claiming to speak to a whole community...devisive statements...an Academic Troll? What an oxymoron!
Listen: no one is saying you have to write a game yourself. But then writing a paper about video games and then claiming you never want it read in the soiled hands of developers is pretty self-defeating, isn't it?
We need to take into account that video games are still a genre in infancy, unlike poetry which has been around and studied since Aristotle. Think more about Sergie Eisenstein at the birth of cinema. He made stirring films that showed knowledge of theory, and he wrote highly influential theory that he couldn't possibly have arrived at if he hadn't been trying to make films.
We have no interest in designing better video games, by and large. Academic study took a turn away from those kinds of concerns in the 60s, and hasn't ever really gone back.
Whether that was a right turn or not is still very much in debate. And I would argue that this early in the game, there is no need to retreat to irrelevancy just yet. Though they may not be making games, the ideas that academics create are going significantly shape video games (at least I hope so).
To return to your analogy, shouldn't an MA have knowledge of such things as stanzas and rhyme schemes? Won't the MFA write better poems if informed by ideas of symbolism or archetypes? I'm not saying they aren't two different fields, but they most definitely need to communicate.
Anyway, aren't you just the least bit excited about influencing a whole field in its nascence. Just a little bit?
Prince Hamlet enters, torn by guilt, grief, jealousy, and vengeance, and soliloquizes with stirring poetry about his problems. Then he proceeds to launch heavy artillery at Queen Gertrude and Claudius. "O that this too too solid flesh would melt 'Neath the heat of a Plasma rifle blast." Wow, even better than the original!
I'm a member of a rare breed: I'm writing my thesis on games, so I'm familiar with all the academic literature on them. but I also code my own games. Without my coding background, I would never be able to analyze games in the same depth.
Most of the literature out there would be vastly improved if these researchers had even a cursory knowledge of programming. Instead, most of the academics are still clinging to what they're familiar with, like literary and film theory, instead of apporaching games on their own grounds. Procedural logic, artificial intelligence issues, and emergent behavior are all ingored by most academics in favor of more comfortable facets like narrative or visuals. Honestly, how many academic articles do we need on Lara Croft's breasts?
The Georgia Tech program mentioned in the article has exactly the right idea. For most of the classes, assignments are split between theory *and* production.
There's a lot of talk about complexity flying around in this discussion, but I don't think that's what the girl-gamer problem is. A lot of games, especially FPS games, are genuinely difficult if you aren't used to that style of movement. A friend of mine tried to get me to play Halo recently, but there are 8 buttons, and three joysticks. I eventually got the hang of moving with that, but before I did, he had been killing me for half an hour. It wasn't much fun, and I'm not inclined to try it again. There are women (like me) who don't enjoy feeling stupid when playing games. Boys, though, grow up playing this type of game, and so they start off with some competency. Maybe women who haven't been playing games for 16+ years like games where they can be competent within a few sessions. If you look at The Sims, online games, adventure games, and others that are popular with large percentages of fem-gamers, they all have intuitive controls that can be mastered quickly. Not only do these appeal to women, but also lots of men who aree new to gaming. To get more women, don't make women's games, make games that newbies can play! Side note: Am I the only one who wants to fly into a homicidal rage every time I hear "Barbie" mentioned in connection to women gamers? And they say women aren't violent.