I was invited by an editor at GameCareerGuide.com to expand on my previous post Game School Dropout: Whining 101 for publication on their website. I put together some of the thoughts I was planning on posting further about on the GL blog, combined with a re-worked version of my original post, and it is up today.
You can read the full article HERE. Feel free to leave comments, I am interested to hear your thoughts.
Allow me, if you will, the opportunity to whine a bit. Indulge me, please, if you can, so that I can have a chance to work this out of my system. It has been a difficult process for me to get back into the routine of blogging now that I finally have time to do it again, and I am thinking that perhaps my problem is that I need to get this self-indulgence out of the way. Thanks for your patience, I will try and keep it brief.
I am a game design school dropout. Having spent a scarce few (although rather intense) weeks in school does not make me an expert on the state of game design education. I know this is so true, yet somehow this wisdom has not prevented me from developing a mighty strong opinion on the matter in spite of the facts. Even though my reasons for leaving school were 95.7% personal, and were the result of real-life issues wholly unrelated to anything having to do with game design, I find I have an increasingly nagging feeling about the state of game design education and how it reflects on the direction of the industry.
In looking back on my brief experience as a student in pursuit of a Masters in Interactive Technology, Art Creation Specialization degree (ack, doesn't that sound so grand? - I just had to see it in writing one more time!) I keep having the same question pop up over and over again. Why is game design, and thus game design education, such a stressed-out affair? Over the last few months I have been thinking it over, and I have a lot to say about the answers I have come up with, but first I need to cover a little ground (Read: here comes the whining).
There are two words that have stuck with me that best describe my experience at game design school: Boot Camp. The military model was obviously in the minds of the creators of the educational philosophy behind the program I attended. Although none of the instructors resorted to calling us "maggots" and making us do push-ups, the over-all structure of the program was strict and grueling. A few of the young men in the program even went out and got crew cuts the first week of classes, assumedly to free up the extra ten minutes a day they devoted to their hair, giving them an edge on the rest of us high-maintenance slaves to personal grooming. The reason for the long hours and sleepless nights required of the students was the expectation that these would be the conditions we would be working under once we had our industry jobs: they were training us for crunch-time. As students we were treated like employees of the school (except we were doing the paying) and were given more work than we could reasonably complete and still have time for the luxuries of life like preparing meals and sleeping. The feeling this gave me at the time was that if I wanted to be in 'this man's army', meaning, if I wanted to hold my own in the game design industry, I was going to have to be put through the wringer and prove that I would be able to survive in the trenches once I had an industry job.
Clearly, I did not pass muster. The lingering and nagging thing about this for me is that this type of education favors the young and (dare I say it?) the male. If what the game design industry needs in order to grow and prosper is diversity beyond the traditional nerd boy army that makes up its proud history, then maybe they need to rethink a few things so that the first ones to drop aren't the females or the grown-ups that are used to having a life (such as, say, myself) so that they can grow beyond that stereotype. Texturing, modeling, level design, programming game engines and AI are all hard enough already that there are not so many people with a talent for this field of study. Do we really need to make this a battle of the sleep-deprived and the toxically caffeinated on top of all that? What about that is good for game design?
I have more thoughts on this, that I will explore in more detail, hopefully without the whining, but I have gone on longer than planned already. In the mean-time, your comments are greatly appreciated!
As it turns out, that graduate school thing I mentioned a few months back wasn't for me. I am now invoking one of the supreme superpowers of the gaming reality: The Do-Over.
"The do-over was one of childhood's most powerful rites, for it exerted our dominion over the laws of space and time. The clock was rolled back, the game was restored to its exact status as before before the contested event and play was resumed."
Time to find a different path to the same goal. The good news is that this means I have time to blog now. Just thought I would let you know.
Quote above is from the streetplay.com website, which now seems to be down.
I just read an article on Yahoo! News about games targeted at improving mental health. One specific game, called MindHabits Booster has been designed to help raise self-esteem by training players to focus on positive feedback in the form of smiling faces, picked out from a crowd of frowners. This from the mindhabits.com website:
"We drew on research showing that certain people have attentional biases toward socially threatening information, so they automatically focus on any sign of rejection or criticism from others, which in turn perpetuates their sensitivity to rejection and heightened tendency to experience social stress."
The concept behind this kind of interactive therapy seems sound and well-researched, but I am wondering about the implementation. There seems to be something missing from what is being offered by MindHabits Booster, at least from what I can see in the demo version. If psychology based games like these are tested and proved to be effective in having specific and lasting effects on issues such as self-esteem then there is going to be a great deal of interest in this approach to game design. But if these games are going to be more than the equivalent of having to remember to take your multi-vitamin everyday - as in, I know this is good for me so I have to make myself play this for ten minutes everyday - then the gameplay elements are going to have to be developed with the same kind of scrutiny that have been applied to the psychological elements. Are we actually going to spend the time playing self-improvement games of any type if they aren't fun and compelling? Dance Dance Revolution succeeds first as a really fun game, and then as a great source of aerobic exercise. Do you think that schools would be adding DDR to their curriculum if they were only as much fun as your average aerobic workout tape?
I am particularly interested in seeing the development and appreciation of games as a medium expand beyond the present borders of entertainment, and have no doubt that we will see a great explosion of new applications for interactive game-like environments used for a wide range of "therapies" as time goes on. I am always interested when I see things like MindHabits Booster because it gives me a sense of watching this medium develop right before my eyes. I know it is only a matter of time before someone takes a Will Wrightian leap forward with this kind of game idea, and it will be fascinating to see what simple shifts in thinking will lead into altogether new ways of experiencing games.
I have embedded a trial of the game below to give you a chance to try it out (let me know if there are any technical issues with it working from the blog). Please let me know what you think about this demo, I will be interested to hear your thoughts.
Demo Source: http://www.mindhabits.com
I have survived my first week of graduate school. Huzzah! Today I wore my "I'm not dead yet" tee-shirt (given to me by a friend who actually got to see Spamalot). I felt I needed a symbol to celebrate the fact that I made it to Friday, and I plan to make this my regular Friday attire as I work my way through the first term here. I can tell that each week will feel like a significant accomplishment in consideration of the workload I will have, and what better way to mark the passing of time at a game school than with a Monty Python reference? By the way, did any of you play the Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail game on the PC years ago? I wish I had it right now.
Since we are on the subject of Monty Python, and since I am pretty much exhausted and too tired to write a proper post, and additionally since no matter how many times you have seen this clip elsewhere it will never get tired (unlike me). . . here is a YouTube clip for your entertainment:
Take a moment to think of me while playing games this weekend (especially those of you who will be playing Guild Wars) since I will be doing reading and homework instead. Maybe if I am really good at my time management I will be able to squeak in an hour here and there throughout the term. But it looks like I will be exclusively focused on the task of learning how to make games from here on out. Buh bye spare time!
I have been working on getting all my financial aid details in order this week to pay for school, and I am amazed at just how abstract this whole process is. I have found that Stafford loans are just like game gold, and I have to remind myself that this is real-world money from time to time to keep the whole process in focus. I have a special online account through school to receive my Stafford loans - the money goes into my virtual bank account, sits there beyond my reach, and then is deducted out to pay my tuition. No trips to the bank, no checks to sign, no sensation of anything real about this money as it passes through my virtual hands. It reminds me of my stash of Guild Wars gold, and I keep thinking that if I don't have enough money from the Stafford loans to pay for everything I can just go out and farm for a while to refill the coffers. If only.
Imagine making your fortune in Second Life selling virtual real estate, and then using your Linden Dollars to pay off your student loans. Or what would really be wonderful for me is to be able to pay for some of my tuition with Guild Wars gold - since otherwise I will just spend it on over-priced armor or those special Green weapons that never seem to drop for me. For those of you who spend most of your free time accumulating wealth in Azeroth, wouldn't it be great to be able to send off some of that hard earned gold to the bursar once the semester starts up? The exchange rate for virtual gold would have to be watched over by some kind of Wall Street-ish virtual currency trading market - but since the financial future is likely brighter in these online worlds than in the current real-world economy the market is sure to be bullish. Besides, everyone knows that gold is a solid investment in time of economic uncertainty: Just ask the folks at IGE.
Who better to appreciate the value of virtual gold than a digital game school? If any educational institution should appreciate the value of game gold it is these specialty schools. Time spent accumulating virtual wealth is time spent better understanding the structure of the game worlds, and in my experience it is the wealthiest players that seem to understand best how things work in these worlds. Surely these are qualities to be appreciated by the schools set up to educate the next generation of game makers. So is it that much of a stretch to think they might also reward students with accumulated game gold? Well, of course it is, but the fact is it is more fun to think about this than the reality of taking on so much real-world debt, which is exactly what I must get back to doing.
WTB(orrow): 10K at prime + 0.50%. Good credit rating - whisper if interested.
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