IGDA Perspectives Newsletter - August 2010 by IGDA

IGDA PERSPECTIVES

AUGUST I 2010 NEWSLETTER

his month, we have a special extended issue on game education thanks to the enthusiasm of IGDA members. What do we mean by game education, exactly? In the case of this issue, we’re referring to the instruction of various aspects of the game development process.

| PAGE 3 |

The elephant in the room | PAGE 6 |

Game Education | page 8 |

Industry’s Role in the Success of Game Education | page 10 |

sPOTLIGHT: digital extremes | page 11 |

Games industry careers begin in teens | page 13 |

Successful Curriculum for Youth Workshops | page 14 |

Exploring Greater Meaning in Play | page 16 |

Game Prototyping Curriculum | page 17 |

SPOTLIGHT: danish Chapter | page 18 |

Learning Through Classic Games | page 19 |

If you’re an industry professional and thinking of skimming this issue since you’re not sure education relates to you, just wait. More and more, institutions are looking to hire professionals in faculty positions since they have real-world experience in game development. Some professionals transition into teaching roles to get a temporary break from the grind of crunch time, while others dip part time in both worlds. Aside from college education for churning out future pros, there are also youth education initiatives. In my own experience, I held game development workshops for Native American and First Nations youth with groups like Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, which was life-changing. Even if youth don’t head into game-specific careers, they are often shaped by the experience because of the teamwork and intensity required to make even one 3-D first-person game level or a small casual game. There are numerous education-related efforts, by both schools and companies, which are profiled here. Thanks to, in order of appearance, Lewis Pulsipher, Susan Gold, Monica McGill, Peter Alau, Karen L. Michaelson, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Brian Winn, Jeremy Gibson, Gorm Lai, Sande Chen, Clara Fernández-Vara, Jeff Chastine, Jon A. Preston, Mary Kurek, Dan Carreker, Foaad Khosmood and Suzanne Freyjadis. Whew!

Teaching ProblemSolving to Encourage Game Innovation | page 20 |

Rev Your Engines | page 21 |

The Missing Piece of Game Education | page 22 |

IGDA at GES North America 2010 | page 23 |

Representing the Global Game Jam | page 24 |

Book Review: Ludoliteracy

Beth Aileen Lameman Editor-in-Chief

Our contributors include: Editor in Chief - Beth Aileen Lameman; Art Director - Cat Wendt; Authors - Lewis Pulsipher, Susan Gold, Monica McGill, Peter Alau, Karen L. Michaelson, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Brian Winn, Jeremy Gibson, Gorm Lai, Sande Chen, Clara Fernández-Vara, Jeff Chastine, Jon A. Preston, Mary Kurek, Dan Carreker, Foaad Khosmood and Suzanne Freyjadis; and Copy Editors - Brian Rubinow, Molly Sauter and Sarah Woody. Special thanks to our sponsors: Shift Worldwide, A.K. Peters and GDC Online. Learn more about the International Game Developers Association at www.igda.org.

By Lewis Pulsipher

here’s a story of several blind men trying to figure out what the large animal — an elephant — they’re examining is actually like. They give wildly varying descriptions of the elephant depending on the part they’re touching. Game education is similar. Depending on what part you experience, it can be as different as an elephant’s leg, tail, ear or tusk. It is all related to games but very, very different in practice. The most obvious difference is between game studies and game development. People in game studies think about games and how games fit into our culture, but they do not create games. Game studies people ponder, and game developers do. Game studies is like art studies; the art studies people look at and think about art, but usually they do not paint or draw (except perhaps as a hobby). If you want to make games or teach people how to make games, game studies is not for you. A less obvious but very important difference — in the United States, at least — is institution accreditation. A degree from a specialized trade school such as I G DA P ers p ect i v es N ews lett eR

Digipen or Full Sail University is a trade school degree, not a college degree. (The name of the school, such as “university,” means nothing.) Employers outside the games industry may not give you credit for your trade school degree. If you later want to enroll in a master’s program at a college-accredited school, your trade school bachelor’s degree does not count. Another not-so-obvious difference is

that a private school — whether trade- or college-accredited — such as Savannah College of Art and Design, is much more expensive than a publicly supported college or university.

It would be better if “game development” was called “game creation,” but many people outside the games industry still equate “development” with programming, and many still think game creation consists mainly of programming. We have other confusing terminology. Some schools say they teach “game design” classes when such classes actually teach all aspects of game production, including programming, art/modeling/animation, sound, production and game design. But “game design” is a sexy term, and schools, whether public or private, are in the business of marketing themselves to students. For example, one English university offers a “game design” degree, but almost all the courses are in art and 3-D modeling, which have nothing to do with game design. So let’s divide “game development” into the elements of game production: programming, art/modeling/animation, design and other (sound, production, marketing, etc.). Many schools purport to teach all of these aspects in their curricula, but in

AUGUST | 2010

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“Game studies people

ponder,

and game developers

DO. ”

practice, they strongly focus on one. If a school concentrates on one area, it’s probably either programming or art, which allows them to use instructors already on hand. Often, the school begins to teach some form of game development because it is losing technology students at a rapid rate and needs something to bring them back. For example, at one East Coast university, the programming department proposed to start teaching game development to regain the interest of potential programming students. The university had no intention of hiring anyone for the new curriculum, so courses were unlikely to have instructors with games industry experience. This is quite common. Few people teaching game development actually have industry experience. Given the relative numbers of employees per category in the games industry and the unlikelihood someone will be hired

as a designer straight out of school, most students ought to be proficient in art/ modeling/animation or programming even if they want to be designers in the long run. Furthermore, while sound or marketing people might be hired straight out of school, producers are also likely to have previous game creation experience. Even within a specialty, you can find greatly varying approaches. At one school, someone may “teach” 500 game design students at once in a large lecture hall. At another, game design classes may be limited to 25, with a great deal of hands-on work. Some schools emphasize memorization of facts (just like high school), while others emphasize experience and understanding. At some schools, practitioners are valued, while at others, academics want to keep practitioners away. If you want to work with the elephant’s tusks but go to a school that

concentrates on the elephant’s legs, you aren’t likely to be happy. Similarly, if you want to teach game education topics, make sure the school you hook up with is interested in teaching what you know and enjoy. The task of figuring out where a school fits in the elephant is beyond the space we have. For more details about these topics, I unblushingly recommend the following: “Identifying a Good Game School” (L. Pulsipher and Ian Schreiber) “Industry Hopefuls: Prepare Intelligently” (L. Pulsipher) “Game Curricula: Differences in Focus” (L. Pulsipher) 

GET INVOLVED! The Game Education Special Interest Group creates a community resource that strengthens the academic membership of the International Game Developers Association while enhancing the education of future and current game developers. Join industry professionals working together to nurture a community of game educators, promote game education and share resources at igda.org/game-education.

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SIG Spotlight: GAME EDUCATION Interview With Susan Gold

What is the focus of the Game Education SIG?

What are the SIG’s current initiatives and activities?

In a nutshell, the focus of the SIG is to help educators become better at what they do through discussion, networking and experience. Since the IGDA is a professional organization, it wasn’t our job to become an academic SIG stepping on the toes of the ACM, DiGRA and other academic organizations. The EdSIG is a place where educators can share and better their profession as teachers within the genre. Games are unique in academia, employing collaborative practice and creative innovation not seen in many siloed institutions and disciplines. We have unique needs as educators as we have had to tread new ground creating paths to degrees that challenge staid institutions and normal conventions of the academy. I had envisioned our list would be an open dialogue with industry to serve as a reality check. We don’t have a lot of industry on the list, but those that are working with us have made our work so much easier to understand and implement. Building bridges and appeasing everyone is a difficult task, but the SIG’s goal and mission is focused on enhancing the education of future and current game developers. Currently, the EdSIG is looking for a new chairperson as it is time for me to step down and focus on new challenges. We have accomplished much over the past four years, and I look forward to seeing what new blood will bring to the group. We will be holding elections in the near future. For anyone interested, it is a great time to step forward and be a part of the SIG’s future.

Our members experience the SIG primarily on the listserv, the Global Game Jam and often at conferences. The Education Summit at GDC has been successful for many years as an opportunity for professional development, interacting with peers and networking with the industry. Additionally, we have had tracks and session at many other conferences, such as GES, DiGRA and SIGGRAPH. I have had the honor to present the Curriculum Framework globally, and I encourage the SIG to have more interaction with educators all over the world. The Global Game Jam has spun out of the EdSIG as it is an entity unto itself, serving more than education. However, the original goals of creating an event that embraced what we teach in the CF — prototyping, experimentation,

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iteration, collaboration and innovation — continue today to be the cornerstone of the framework.

Where does the SIG see game education going? I hope that the EdSIG continues to function highly without me. I expect it will, because we have some really great volunteers with some exciting ideas. We revamp the CF every five years, so we need to present again in 2012. Although the framework is meant to be broad and embrace all degrees and types of institutions, I think that there are some areas that we can put down some standards like collaborative projects and teamwork, prototyping and iterative design, writing skills, and ability to stand up and make a point. I have put a highly qualified educator in charge of the next CF — Don Geyer, who has created an incredible undergraduate program at the University of Gotland in Sweden. Although he is going to lead this project, he will need assistance from educators and industry alike. My recommendations to Don were to seek out and highlight the outcome and objectives of game education. I also thought it would be helpful if the SIGs within the IGDA mentored areas of their expertise within the framework, i.e. Writers’ SIG would help with the Interactive Narrative section, Programmers’ SIG help with the Programming & Math section, etc. I really hope that idea takes off with the other SIGs.

What are your hopes for the SIG in the future? My hope is that the SIG continues to be a place for open dialogue and growth pa g e 6

to new places and generate new ideas to solve old problems.

Is there anything the greater IGDA chapter community should know about the Game Education SIG?

within education. I believe we have something special within games that I have not seen in many disciplines other than film. I think that games can change the future of the world for the better. I can point to the White House approaching the industry for help in solving issues, such as Apps for Healthy Kids. But they are also talking to us about how to help solve the STE(AM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, (Art) and Mathematic) issues in public schools. I am not talking about the dreaded

edutainment, but in bringing students back to math, science and art in innovative ways. I can point to my friend Jane McGonigal and her talk at TED this year, where she tells us why we need to make and play more games. I honestly believe that through games, we evolve and grow as people. In playing and making games, we collaborate. The fostering of communication and the sharing of experience and ideas is what is at the core of what we teach in our genre and which hopefully will take us

We need the community to interact with educators locally and globally. Game education is taking off in all parts of the world; we had people participating in the GGJ from Qatar and Pakistan to Kentucky and North Dakota. Having the industry’s input in the curriculum is not only helpful, but needed. Join the IGDA CF revamp by e-mailing Don Geyer at dongeyer@gmail.com. Also, please reach out to your local schools. Give talks about what you do. Ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. A lot of those dreams go out the window if they don’t have the math skills and understand the meaning of hard work. We need you to encourage women, diversity and the importance of an education. 

Industry’s Role in the Success of Game Education By Monica McGill

ndergraduate game degree programs are, in many respects, strange newcomers to the academic field. Despite being met with skepticism in and out of the university system, programs in the United Kingdom and the United States are venturing into new territory, creating curricula, recruiting students, establishing industry ties and exploring viable research. Even in this tough economic climate, many university administrators and departments are reaping the benefits of what they initially projected: These new programs are appealing to the latest generation of game console natives. A recent study of undergraduate game degree programs at public and not-for-profit institutions in the UK and the United States found full degree programs in both countries are less than 10 years old, and the majority are 4 years old with no matriculated students as of yet. The UK is much further ahead in establishing these programs. More than one-third of universities in the UK have game degree programs on the books, while less than 1 percent have added them in the United States. Efforts are under way at universities in both countries to continue adding and refining game degree programs. The games industry can play an important role as growth continues. Understand the evolution of new programs takes time On average, the incubation period for a new program takes 16 months from

inception to program implementation, and the refinement of programs will be ongoing. Curriculum planners must adhere to university policies and contend with limited resources for creating these programs. Compound that with the fact planners often have little instructional experience in games, and the challenges increase. Similar to the early stages of computer science programs, the first graduates of these programs may look considerably different than those who graduate later on. Recognize the role of public and not-for-profit institutions Many public and not-for-profit institutions create curricula that teach skills well beyond those needed for the games industry. Faculty members want to meet the needs of various students, from those who want to pursue a career in research to those who want to own their own game companies. Students and their needs are diverse, and curricula take this diversity into account. Provide opportunities for internships Undergraduate programs within the UK currently have an average of 96 students; within the United States, the average is 137 students. Many of these students would welcome paid opportunities to work in the games industry at an established company or in an indie environment. Creating and offering these positions takes resources, but industry will benefit from investing in future generations of game developers. Faculty may also be

interested in summer positions that immerse them in games development. Partner with colleges and universities Recall that in the early days of computer science programs, many professors had little experience with computers. Faculty backgrounds included mathematics, engineering, business and other fields. Yet programs were established, faculty was quickly brought up to speed and students were taught a subject not knowing what to expect or what job opportunities there would be at the end of four years.

“The games industry has the potential of being the biggest beneficiaries of S T R O N G game degree programs. ” As more institutions add game degree programs, many would welcome assistance from industry. Whether it’s providing speakers for lecture series, providing critiques of game curricula, providing hardware, software and games for labs and libraries, or donating more serious financial aid and resources, many faculty members would welcome developing strong relationships with the industry. The games industry has the potential of being the biggest beneficiaries of strong game degree programs. Academic programs are still in their infancy. By working together, we can create a generation of strong game developers who are passionate about their dream jobs. 

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Studio Profile: DIGITAL EXTREMES Interview With Peter Alau How did Digital Extremes get going? Digital Extremes was founded in 1993 to create shareware during the craze of the early ’90s. Epic Pinball was a 10-month project written entirely in assembly language by James Schmalz. Sequels like Silverball and Extreme Pinball were released shortly thereafter, and together, they helped fund the creation of what would become Epic Games’ Unreal. Digital Extremes partnered with Epic Games in 1994 — who was, at that time, its shareware publisher. We co-created Unreal and its counterpart Unreal Tournament and continued to work on the co-development of the Unreal franchise. We have since gone on to create Dark Sector, the PS3 version of BioShock and the multiplayer version of BioShock 2.

How do you choose your employees, and how do you facilitate their learning? Digital Extremes is extremely fortunate to be located in London, Ontario, in between two excellent universities. We are able the pick the best and brightest and help them build careers in the games industry. We tend to pick students who are creative and willing to find optimal solutions to complex problems. New employees begin with an introduction to our coding practices and are given specific problems to solve. Digital Extremes has a very low employee turnover rate; our teams are constantly challenged with new titles that have very specific problems to solve.

What more can you tell me about the games Digital Extremes is working on?

Digital Extremes has over 100 employees. We have about 50 artists (art/ sound/animation) and 30 programmers.

We cannot discuss the titles we are working on. We would like to mention that we are working on some very exciting high-profile titles and have the privilege of working with some excellent talent outside of the games industry.

What makes your studio different from any other?

What’s the best part of working at Digital Extremes?

Digital Extremes is in a unique position of being a strong independent studio with a very high quality of production value with an excellent track record of producing hits. We have a coding practice that sets us apart from other games studios and allows us to build high-profile titles without the risk of late-term bug discovery that would lead to massive recoding and/or patching efforts. Where we really have taken the lead is our commitment to professional coding practices that are often discussed in the games industry but tend to be pushed aside as deadlines take precedent. Notably, Digital Extremes was named one of the top 50 employers for young people.

Digital Extremes has some of the best titles currently in development. Our unique game engine allows us to work reasonable hours and still keep development schedule deadlines. A consistent devotion to quality titles has earned us a strong reputation. What we are able to deliver as a result is a title that we can be proud of and still have time to improve our technology.

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How many people work at Digital Extremes, and what’s your breakdown?

What challenges does Digital Extremes face? Digital Extremes will continue to grow, and growth comes with its own challenges. We are constantly on the lookout for the best developers available, and they are in high demand. There are always problems associated with new technologies, but the

framework that we have been building for the past several years will reduce that challenge.

Where do you see Digital Extremes heading in the future? Digital Extremes will continue licensing the Evolution Engine and developing AAA titles. We are currently partnered with most of the games industry’s future-leaning companies, and we are able to help shape the development of those technologies. We expect to continue at the top of game development houses and making games that are awesome.

Why is it important to be part of the greater game community, and how does IGDA help you connect? IGDA has been very helpful as we build a coalition of Ontario game developers. We have a strong presence in the province, and monthly meetings and events have helped us work with local and international developers.

What advice do you have for other developers interested in providing opportunities for universities and education overall? Begin by making a workplace that caters to the creative. Digital Extremes provides a workspace that encourages cross-disciplinary communication. We tend to build better tools and better development practices by consistently understanding other team members’ workflows. An environment that allows outside thinking has been very helpful to us. Digital Extremes does not like to accept “that’s the way we have always done it” as an answer. We tend to ask “how can we do this better?” This both fosters an academic environment and allows team members to make changes that only benefit your title. 

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Games Industry Careers Begin in Teens By Karen L. Michaelson

ost kids who play games dream of becoming game developers who will create the killer game of the future. Some play around with modding or create simple games. Most of them don’t have any idea what it takes to become a game developer, the relationship between design and the technical aspects of game production, or even what careers are available in the world of game development. Enter Tincan’s video game development program, created to start teens on the career path to game development. Originally funded by the National Science Foundation to engage both secondary school students and teachers in video game development, the program has evolved into a series of one- to two-week teen summer camps in which serious games are created while teens learn to collaborate and become familiar with the concepts of design and object-oriented programming. About three-fourths of the teens are middle school students, but many return when they are in high school to take advanced workshops or to become teacher-interns in the program. Probably 80 percent are boys, so Tincan has created girls-only programs to attract young women into the field.

The camps begin by asking the kids what makes a good game. After the inevitable “explosions,” “monsters” and “blood” (they are, after all, primarily middle school boys), the teens are surprisingly able to articulate exactly what the literature says makes a good game: flow, story, challenge and fun. They play some carefully selected educational and commercial games and talk about if they are good games and why. The teens, however, don’t usually want to talk much. They want to make a game (preferably a shooter game) once they have minimal skills using MultiMedia Fusion 2. We let them do a free-form game to get it out of their systems and help them realize their game won’t actually run without careful planning and story-boarding — areas students typically don’t want to address. Once they are ready to focus on designing a game, Tincan uses Science Game Cards (based on the Values at Play cards), having teens choose cards with the name of a game, a science topic and a value, such as “safety,” to quickly design a paper game, learning concepts such as game mechanics and getting the experience of designing a game within structural constraints without the distraction of the technology. Working in teams, the students then create a video game on an environmental topic.

The first realization teens have at camp is that it is harder to make a game than it is to play one. This challenge seems to create greater focus — no one ever drops out of a camp. They hardly take time for lunch breaks! The games they create, although not complex, are highly imaginative. They play test one another’s games and give one another input on improving gameplay. Teens at video game development camp increase their interest in game development careers — but with a more realistic understanding of what that entails. Although none of the teens are old enough to have moved into those careers, some have taken the first steps. They have sought out opportunities to take computer science classes available at the high school level and through programs that allow early access to local college-level classes. Their skills translate into other areas of technology: One young woman used her animation skills learned at game camp to teach other girls in a film program to create animations. Some teens have applied for internships in which they can use their skills or to be external play testers for games. A surprising number of students purchase the software for home use and continue to polish their games or create new ones. 

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Successful Curriculum for Youth Workshops By Magy Seif El-Nasr

ccording to the Entertainment Software Association, “U.S. computer and video game software sales grew 22.9 percent in 2008 to $11.7 billion — more than quadrupling industry software sales since 1996.” The computer and video game industry employs more than 80,000 people in 31 states in the United States alone. It is projected the industry will support more than a quarter of a million American jobs in the coming year. The average salary for employees is $92,300, resulting in total national compensation of $2.2 billion in the United States, according to the ESA. This trend has also been reported in other countries around the world, including Japan, Korea, China and India. This puts the gaming industry in an important position in the software and entertainment industry worldwide. In the past year, we have developed a curriculum to disseminate game design, development process, computational thinking and problem-solving skills using game development. This curriculum was delivered as three after-school workshops for middle and high school students in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, at three different schools: Harkness Institute, British American School and Mexico Americano School. A total of 29 students signed up for the workshops: 16 in British American School, eight in Mexico Americano School and five in Harkness Institute. Ages of students ranged from 10 to 19 with the majority between 14 and 16 years old. All students were Mexican except two students who were Canadian and attend British American School. The workshops were scheduled at different times depending on the school and the student times. It was designed as 12 four- to six-hour sessions; at the end of the workshop, we put together a graduation ceremony in which students presented their work to parents, media and kids in attendance. All students

were given a certificate of completion at the end of the class. There are three distinct lessons we learned as part of changing and evolving these workshops through the years since 2004. First, the inclusion of the industry was crucial. We invited five game professionals: one producer, two lead engineers, one designer and one artist.

They came at different times during the workshops. They not only came to see the students’ games, but they also gave talks, listened to game pitches and played game demos. This gave the workshops creditability and encouraged students to work harder to make their games and concepts presentable to show to industry professionals who talked with them. The timing of these visits was also important to orchestrate at critical points in the course. Second, while many researchers advocate problem-based learning or constructivist methods, we found in our experience this normally does not work specifically when we are dealing with kids who have no previous knowledge about gaming engines or tools. Thus, we advocate a more guided approach. We used a method similar to game tutorials and reward systems in which essential design and programming concepts were divided into piecemeal problems given to students in sequential fashion in the beginning four sessions. These piecemeal problems introduce the fundamentals of design and programming.

All students are required to complete these problems to proceed to the next problem (or the next level). In our workshops, all students were able to pass all five problem sets; some students were faster than others. We also gave students rewards for harder and more challenging problems. These rewards were games that Electronic Arts donated to us for these workshops. This workshop was developed as a tutorial level within a game in which players/students had to go through certain levels of training and accomplish all given objectives to proceed. The third important feature of the workshop is the graduation ceremony, to which parents, teachers, media and games industry professionals were invited. The anticipation of this event, which instructors kept reminding the students of from session 1, was important in encouraging students to do their best. The retention of the workshops was 100 percent. We had a total of two excused absences for medical or family reasons; otherwise, all students attended all sessions, and none dropped out. The anticipation of the graduation ceremony was obvious and very well-observed by teachers within the school who noted that students were working hard on the weekends and after school to get a presentable demo to show their parents and the media. In total, we believe these workshops were very successful and have definitely made a big change in the lives of the students who took them. We have several students asking to attend GDC, two have already started their own game company and many are still making games as a hobby. As noted by parents, the students demonstrated an unexpected maturity in presenting their ideas and game concepts. This is not surprising at all to us; we believed in them, and they delivered. Even though their first language was not English, all students — from 10-year-olds to 17-year-olds — presented in English very clearly. 

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“ the inclusion of the

INDUSTRY WAS CRUCIAL. ”

Exploring Greater Meaning in

PLAY By Brian Winn

he International Conference on Meaningful Play 2008 explored the potential of games to entertain, inform, educate and persuade in meaningful ways. “Designing and Studying Games That Matter” was the slogan for the inaugural biannual conference, which encompasses both the practical and theoretical exploration of game design and research. The 225 attendees, from 10 countries and 20 U.S. states, were a combination of academic researchers, industry game designers and developers, and students. What is “meaningful play?” Many game designers might agree that meaningful play is the holy grail of all game design. For example, Leigh Anne Cappello, a vice president and futurist for Hasbro, argued in her keynote “all play is meaningful.” After providing the attendees with a few hundred tubs of Play-Doh to creatively sculpt with (see photo), she presented a wide-ranging examination of fun, including the experiences of anticipating, pretending, having friends, making friends,

collecting, connecting, getting messy, creating, destroying, conquering, winning, escaping, imagining, remembering, constructing and more. What is fun or meaningful varies by gender, age, life stage, personality and species. Play ensues when a toy or game connects with what an individual finds to be fun. Similarly, meaningful play is individualistic, not universal, and depends on the player. Many of the keynote speakers began their talks by refuting or otherwise commenting on the term “serious games,” then noting that the conference title, Meaningful Play, was a more inclusive and palatable construct. A simple definition of serious games is “games with a purpose beyond entertainment.” Common domains of serious games include military games, government and nongovernment organization games, corporate and training games, games for learning, games for health, and persuasive or social-issue games. In his keynote speech, Electronic Arts Chief Creative Officer Richard Hillman announced that one of the ways EA would be making charitable contributions would be allocating staff expertise to creating social-issue games. Serious-game design teams and game design class discussions wrestle with the questions of whether a serious game needs to be or even should be fun and how to balance the sometimes contradictory goals of fun and

seriousness. As game designer and lecturer Nick Fortugno explained in his keynote, the idea a game doesn’t strive to be fun seems preposterous to entertainment-game designers. But do all games need to be fun to be meaningful? Perhaps not. Certainly meaningful books and movies tap into a variety of emotions. Fortugno posited that games will have achieved a worthy milestone when a single game has the effect of transforming culture on a national or international scale, as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin did to attitudes toward the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. An alternate measure of achieving meaningful play expressed by some designers is whether art critics will ever recognize a game as fine art, rather than merely pop culture. Academic and persuasive game designer Ian Bogost delivered his keynote, “The Unknown Possibilities of Existence,” about the topic of art games. Bogost believes art games share four characteristics: introspection, authorship (in contrast

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to the anonymity of the large design teams at most game studios), procedural rhetoric and historicity (consciousness of their place in the flow of art and game design over time). Here, meaningfulness emphasizes the creator, creative process and the critic. Tracy Fullerton, a former games in-

dustry professional and founder of the University of Southern California game design programs, offered a related perspective in her keynote. She pointed to the artistry of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and talked about the need for game designers to “wander in the desert” seeking new means of expression to mold into the medium of games. Showing examples from her own work with Bill Viola on the art game The Night Journey, she talked about how player actions available in games today make use of a very limited number of verbs. The rest of the dictionary contains a potential treasure trove of unexplored verbs (which could be translated into game mechanics) with transformative potential to expand game design. The upcoming Meaningful Play 2010 continues the discussion on meaningful play. The conference, hosted by Michigan State University, takes place Oct. 21-23, 2010, in East Lansing, Mich. The conference includes keynotes from James Gee, professor of education at Arizona State University and noted author of such influential

books as What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy; Helle Winding, senior director of marketing and product management for LEGO Universe; Katherine Isbister, associate professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and director of the Social Game Lab; Robin Hunicke, producer and game designer at thatgamecompany; Constance Steinkuehler, assistant professor at University of Wisconsin Madison who has done pivotal research on cognition, learning and literacy in massively multiplayer online games; and Ben Sawyer, serious-game advocate and producer of the Serious Game Summits and Games for Health conferences. Beyond keynotes, there will be four concurrent tracks of sessions, including industry talks, academic presentations and panel discussions. There are also many opportunities to mix, mingle and build communities. More details are available at http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu. 

By Jeremy Gibson

lay-centric design is the core design philosophy of our classes at the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media Division. From their first design class, students are making and playing games utilizing an iterative design process. Students start by making paper games — everything from board games to card games to role-playing games — and soon move on to digital games. We start with the design of paper games because they are much faster to create yet still serve to demonstrate the concepts of probability, game mechanics and systems-based thinking that are all directly applicable to digital game design. Now, let’s get down to making a game. First, you need to get in the right headspace. Initial prototyping isn’t about making a full game right off the bat; it’s about making something small and beautiful that explores a specific idea. To start, try making a prototype that proves your core mechanic is fun. A game’s core mechanic is the aspect of the game players do the most. In Super Mario Bros., the core mechanic is jumping, and Shigeru Miyamoto apparently spent a month making sure the simple act of jumping felt fun. Now, most two-dimensional platform games use jump mechanics very similar to those he developed.

Iterative Process of Design The iterative process of design is a constant across nearly all design disciplines, and I’ve seen it everywhere from advertising firms to furniture shops. It includes four steps: analysis, design, implementation and testing.

Design Next, you need to design your prototype. This usually involves a lot of whiteboarding and is similar to developing a hypothesis in a science experiment. Take a stab at what will make your core mechanic fun, and remember to keep it simple.

Implementation Once you have a design, you need to make it happen. In a paper game, this means designing a board or some cards and writing up some simple rules. In a digital game, it’s much more difficult. If you’re programming a digital prototype, remember that your code doesn’t need to be beautiful or efficient. The one purpose of your prototype is to test your design. Don’t worry about code efficiency. Just get your code working. However, the one good coding practice you should stick to is writing good code comments. You’ll be thankful later when you’re trying to refine or refactor the code.

Testing This is the moment all your effort has led up to. First, play the game yourself. Does it seem to do what you wanted? If so, test it on some trusted friends, and get their opinions. If that goes well, try showing it to some people you’ve never met. Once you feel like you’ve learned everything you’re going to from this iteration, it’s time to move on to your next iteration.

Iteration

What do you want your design to achieve? Do you want to solve a problem? Do you want to explore a new kind of play? Choose the goal of your game, then pick your core mechanic and write down how you want it to feel.

Iteration is the core of play-centric design. Once you’ve tested your game, go back into analysis mode. Look at the results of your testing, figure out what was wrong and jump back into the design process again. Some iterations will bring you closer to your goal, while others will take you further away. Be sure to keep backups of your previous versions so you can revert

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Analysis

if you take a step in the wrong direction. Usually, you’ll want to make incremental design changes, which will allow you to easily understand the differences in feedback you get from testing, but occasionally, you want to make a broad, sweeping change to keep your design from getting stuck.

Practice, practice, practice ... The only way to become a great game designer is to design games. Period. You can read this article; you can read some of the great game design books out there; you can play a ton of games. All of these things will help you get there, but the No. 1 thing you can do is design new games over and over. So, grab some friends and a whiteboard, and make something!

Recommended Reading To learn more about play-centric design and prototyping, check out these great design books: - Game Design Workshop, Second Edition, by Tracy Fullerton and Chris Swain - The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell 

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Chapter Spotlight:

DANISH CHAPTER Interview With Gorm Lai

How did your chapter get started? Our chapter was started in the beginning of the 2000s by our first chapter leader, Jacob Buck. He passed by the IGDA booth at the Game Developers Conference, heard more about the organization, and they agreed he would start a chapter here in Denmark.

Who are your chapter leaders? Our current chapter leaders and board members are David Mariner (chairman), Dajana Dimovska (vice chairman), Alexandra Mariner (treasurer), Jesper Taxbøl (board member) and Anders Højsted (board member). An interesting fact about our board and chapter is that since there have been no international chartering processes yet, we have long ago created our own legal Danish association with elected leaders. The association has two kinds of memberships, a local one and an international one. The latter is tied into the person already being a member of the IGDA. Our hope is that we can we use the local membership to funnel people into the full international membership. I am very happy to see this model as well as our association working so well. The transition has been quite smooth when I stepped down as chairman a few months ago.

How do you recruit new members into your chapter? Firstly, we do the usual kind of stuff like promoting the chapter with the chapter events, like talks, bar nights, etc. On top of that, we also sell local memberships as part of participating in events, primarily the Nordic Game Jam. It is our hope that the local membership can be used to funnel members into being full IGDA members.

for the summer holidays. We don’t do the traditional full chapter meeting as often as we would like to anymore; though instead, we have other offerings, like special interest group meetings, the Nordic Game Jam and more.

Does the chapter have a favorite place to meet, or does that change? Our favorite place to meet used to be the IT University, which has a very good game design program. We have quite a good relationship with the management of the school as well as many of the students. That relationship seems to work to the advantage of both parties.

What was your most recent event as a chapter? Our last meeting was in our Audio Design chapter special interest group. One of the interesting things that we are doing is that we have copied the global IGDA SIG model and have Chapter SIG meetings in Game Design, Audio Design, Business and Graphics Programming. Being such a traditionally underserved area, I have been especially impressed with the work and progress of the Audio Design SIG.

What has your chapter done to support game education?

The chapter meets quite often through a very diverse set of events. I would say on average this is about once a month, except

In general, our chapter has a very close cooperation with local universities, especially the IT University. Our main event, the Nordic Game Jam, is hosted there. The Nordic Game Jam is a very wellsponsored and well-funded game jam, and with 300 participants in 2010, it is the biggest game jam in the world. More than

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How often does the chapter meet?

60 games were produced in the course of a single weekend. The Nordic Game Jam is the flagship jam of the Global Game Jam, and the model we are promoting to all the 139 sites on how to arrange a game jam is based on how it is done at the Nordic Game Jam. Quite often, the Nordic Game Jam works like a test bed for new ideas. At least half of the participants are students, and they get a unique opportunity to actually produce a game in a very short amount of time as well as work alongside seasoned professionals. The latter is not only a great learning experience for them, but it is also an opportunity for them to show off their work and strengths.

Is there anything the greater IGDA chapter community should know about you? I think we do a number of interesting things, though there is definitely also room for improvement. I have tried to touch upon the most interesting things above, which is the Nordic Game Jam, the Chapter SIGs as well as the special way we have organized our chapter because of the current challenges with the international chartering process. 

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The following article first appeared on the community blog, Game Design Aspect of the Month (http://gamedesignaspect.blogspot. com), also known as GDAM, under the topic of In Search of Old School Fun. Each month, game designers and other industry professionals offer their views on a particular game design issue. Please participate in August 2010’s topic, Design 2020: Imagining the future of Gaming, by submitting an article or comment. GDAM is currently edited by Sande Chen and Altug Isigan, founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

few weekends ago, I participated in a Playpower workshop to create 8-bit games for children in developing countries. It turns out that the patents on these old systems have long gone, so Chinese manufacturers have been churning them out and selling them for the equivalent of $10 each. Who would have known that 8-bit systems were still popular as ever in parts of India or Africa? Outside of the demo scene and video game console collectors, there’s probably no one tinkering with an NES or Atari 2600 in the United States. But, we all know the games from that era. Games like Pac-Man or Asteroids. I G DA P ers p ect i v es N ews lett eR

These classic games have endured the test of time to become cultural icons. It seems like more and more of these classic games are being re-released on Steam, Xbox Live Arcade or Good Old Games. Game design students should be rejoicing. In the past, I had one game design student tell me he was glad he was born after that era so he didn’t have to play games

“Stripped of the GLITZY graphics and orchestral soundtrack, a game stands and falls on its design.” with stinky graphics. The thing is, the graphics shouldn’t matter to a game design student. Photorealistic graphics may enhance the game experience, but a game can be great even if your ship is an isosceles triangle. Speaking at the recent Gamesauce conference, game designer Kent Hudson remarked that Jason Rohrer’s game Passage, even with its low-resolution graphics, had a deep AUGUST | 2010

emotional resonance for him. Furthermore, great game design is about dealing with constraints. Stripped of the glitzy graphics and orchestral soundtrack, a game stands and falls on its design. The Playpower workshop outlined the many limitations faced by the original game designers. Just think: Your watch or cell phone may be (and probably is) more powerful than an original NES. Yet, people are still playing and enjoying classic games. That’s why game design students should be studying these classic games — so they, in turn, can make enduring classic games for the next generation of game design students. But take a step further. If you’re up for a challenge, consider signing up and making an 8-bit game for Playpower. The Playpower Foundation wants games of educational value, but hey, that’s just another game design constraint. After all, your game may just become the monster hit of the developing world. 

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here is a widespread myth that games education should be focused around hard skills. This belief is held by both educators and students, who believe game development is just a matter of knowing the tools. The industry is also guilty of perpetuating this myth, since recruiters tend to sift through applications by just looking at the list of tools and programming languages on an applicant’s resume. Hard skills, like knowing how to script in the Unreal engine or 3-D modeling in Maya are easy to evaluate; they seem adequate for curricula assessment purposes and for industry recruiters. However, they can only take our students so far, since technologies evolve and improve at a fast rate. Game development education must focus on problem solving rather than on the tools so what students learn stays relevant and applicable. Making games is not simply recombining specific snippets of code and assets, but tackling daily challenges that must be solved creatively. Teaching problem solving means coaching students to adapt when they have to work with new tools. How can this be done? In my own experience, it is a general approach in the curriculum. It can also be done in individual courses, even when the main requirement is learning hard skills. Practical assignments are a good device to teach problem solving. Constraints and limitations in the assignments are very productive, since the students must find creative workarounds. Rather than giving them an exercise in which they have to reproduce a specific type of code or a variation, the assignment can pose an open problem: a game for an outdated I G DA P ers p ect i v es N ews lett eR

BY CLARA FERNÁNDEZ-VARA

platform, a new type of dialogue system or a character model with only 150 polygons. Although real-life constraints, such as limiting the file size, may be more resonant with professional practice, inventive limitations encourage students to generate creative problem-solving skills and revise their development methods. Team assignments, particularly if the course has students from different departments (e.g. visual arts and computer science), introduce students to solving problems with people from other disciplines — another essential soft skill in game development. Thinking critically about games is also part of learning problem-solving strategies. Playing and analyzing games as part of a course (particularly games students may not be familiar with) prepares students to reflect on their own games. It also stimulates innovation, since students become familiar with the design space of video games and become more aware of possible avenues for improvement. In an ideal world, the industry should also value these soft skills, so recruiters should look beyond the list of programming languages and tools. However, working in the games industry is not limited to working in AAA companies — some of the most innovative games come from independent developers. As educators, we are doing a disservice to our eager students by teaching how to make games exactly like the ones already out there. The push for game innovation starts in our classrooms, with us educators starting to think outside the box. 

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ur universities, Clayton State University and Southern Polytechnic State University, are teaming with students who think computing and game development are the coolest majors on campus, and we agree. One of the difficulties we face is letting students jump into the deep end and work on games without having them drown in the details of programming implementation. Within the degree programs at our two universities, we adopt a very gaming and hands-on approach from the very first term — something students appreciate. For computing (non-game specific) majors, gaming is an engaging way to learn core topics; however, developing games can be overwhelming to those with little to no programming skills. To empower students and allow them to focus on implementing their designs and ideas, we use Unity as a platform to learn basic introductory programming concepts. Unity provides sufficient scaffolding that enables students to develop simple 3-D games without requiring them to be familiar with the underlying complexities of interactive computer graphics. Modern 3-D engines such as Unity allow students to use complex models, transforms and animations. Through scripting, even novice students can explore and apply simple concepts (e.g., variable declaration/manipulation) as well as more complex ideas, such as data structures and object-oriented programming. The courses also integrate asset generation. Students are expected to

model simple 3-D objects using Blender, record their voices using Audacity and create background music using ACID, a loop-based music sequencing program. We’ve adopted these tools because they are free (or inexpensive), and students can load them on their personal computers, allowing them to work around the clock when our labs are closed. Students are expected to generate, import and use their own content in a Unity game. Such an approach enables students to be involved in a small-scale project — from design to completion — and

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exposes students early on to the content pipeline. During informal discussions with students after they completed the courses, they mention that not only does this leave them feeling empowered, but it also fundamentally changes the way they view video games

— seeing the process holistically from the very first course in our degrees. Later in the gaming major at SPSU, we delve deeper into game development and have students work with Unity, UDK and GECK. With more programming experience behind them, we can expose students to these multiple platforms and let them see the similarities and differences between engines and scripting languages — all while still insulating them from many of the painful details of lower-level engine coding. Student teams have developed some impressive projects that highlight their design and game development skills and have had time to play-balance levels and test for the emergence of the dynamics within their games. This is something that wouldn’t be possible if they spent the entire term building a game from the ground up. We believe it is important to provide students with approachable experiences for their game development, and tools like Unity, UDK and GECK provide a great solution when budgets are stretched thin. We also allow students to develop non-digital board games (a very important approach) and, later in their studies, build games using their own custom codes. For the novice and maturing students, the engines we’ve adopted give them just enough help early in their studies. We hope you’re having similar experiences, and if you would like more details, e-mail games@spsu.edu. Happy gaming! 

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The Missing Piece of Game Education By Mary Kurek

on’t let the surfer-dude looks of Rob Smith fool you. This young developer, who cut his teeth on games like Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and DJ Hero, is serious about business. Smith obtained his bachelor’s degree in game art and design from The Art Institute of California in San Francisco. Before he graduated, he was picked up for a production internship with Shaba Games (then owned by Activision). Shaba hired Smith as a full-time game designer and scripter after he completed his studies at AICA-SF in 2007. Shaba eventually fell prey to Activision cuts, which prompted Smith and some talented colleagues to talk more seriously about starting their own social games development company. Mad Turtle Media officially launched October 2009 and quickly published PlantMe, a Facebook game with an eco-friendly mission. “That game, in itself, was a learning experience,” Smith says. ”One that caused us to produce a crowd-sourcing system called GridBeat, which we are

marketing, along with developing our next game.” Smith credits his education at AICA for preparing him well enough for the industry to be able to nab a job immediately after graduation — something he knows is rare for developers these days. However, at this point in his start-up, what he feels is helping him most is a different kind of education — the kind that comes from networking. Recently, Smith has made four significant connections that have placed his foot firmly in the door of major publishing companies. He’s talked with business developers, networking experts and investor strategists who have provided him with valuable advice. One of those strategists was Seahorn Capital executive Marc Jackson. Jackson is the founder and CEO of Seahorn Capital, an executive production and management consulting firm that specializes in innovative financing solutions and business models for interactive entertainment.

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He’s advised Smith and other fund-seeking developers to prepare themselves for a challenging process that can take six to 12 months. Making the point that business education in the industry is critical to those who build start-ups, Jackson says, “You’ve got to have a proven track record and be able to validate your business, because investor funding is not abundant right now. “Old-school investors are most attracted to teams of talent that have worked together under a publisher that has put out AAA titles,” Jackson says. “Teams that have already gathered initial funding and have launched an IP with some traction also have a chance at securing investor attention.” Angel investor groups are another option, Jackson says, but seekers must educate themselves on the process, because you have to submit an honest business proposal, and some groups will charge to even look at those. “Open Angel Forum, started by Jason Calacanis [Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Weblogs Inc.], can be a pa g e 2 1

resource for some developers,” Jackson says. “OAF aims at taking a bit of the difficulty out of finding funding by creating a merit-based, less club-like environment.” Bottom line: There are options for getting your foot in the door — if you know what you are doing and who can help you do it. As a musical composer with a developer’s heart, George Hufnagl combined his specialties with that of his partners’ to form My Escape Games, and they are working on finding their own angel. Ready to debut its first mobile phone flash game called Critter Cubes in August 2010, My Escape Games is busy fine-tuning its demo and packaging the company for max appeal to a publisher or investor. Hufnagl, who has strong academic roots in his field, admits the business part of launching a game is the most difficult. “This industry requires that you quickly adopt a business head and a student mindset,” Hufnagl says. “I network and ask a ton of questions around the details involved in

writing an attention-getting proposal ... because, you don’t get do-overs in this industry.” Jason Rice of Ninja Logic agrees with Hufnagl. Rice often attracts talent-turned-developer companies in his consultancy, sometimes advising and sometimes becoming their contracted project manager. He tells developers who are trying to get their feet in the door that their proposals should be well-organized for readability, such as arranging sections with bullet points and feature lists. There should be an executive summary, studio profiles, samples of past work, a budget and a production schedule. Most production schedules should include a completed game design document as one of the first milestones and should tie a payment to the delivery. “It may sound simple, but this type of information is often left out of game developer training,” Rice says. “The industry hasn’t standardized much by way of training and education yet, which I think is why a lot of developers don’t know how to put together a

standard proposal. But, not knowing this information could break you.” It seems easy to assume by watching conversations on Twitter and LinkedIn relative to game developer start-ups that developers mostly come to the industry via experience rather than schooling. So, if the business side of the games industry isn’t learned on the job, then that education must be gained through other outlets that offer educational programs and networking with experts. Fortunately, here at IGDA, you have both of those opportunities. In the interest of motivating those who think they can guess their way through the business of the industry, I offer this thought: You can’t know what you don’t know until you are enlightened. If you haven’t been trained, that kind of education happens one of two ways: painful and less painful. Ultimately, it seems the thing that gets your foot in the door is becoming as passionate about learning the business as you are about developing your games. Get ahead of the curve, and make it a priority. 

n June 15-16, the Game Education Summit North America was held at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. Its three tracks provided an activity-packed two days, particularly for those trying to attend both it and the Electronic Entertainment Expo going on at the same time downtown. The IGDA offered its track on day one, contributing five unique topics to the summit. Other tracks available to attendees were Curriculum Development, Technology and Management, Game Design, and Serious Games. I was given the opportunity to open the IGDA track and introduce

the plans for the new Curriculum Framework. The topic gathered about a dozen attendees and sparked some interest going forward. Foaad Khosmood followed, presenting the benefits of the Global Game Jam to the conference. After lunch, Jose Zagal gave a presentation on ethics followed by Jeremy Gibson’s illustration of how USC has used prototyping in its classes. The whole thing was wrapped up after the break by Walter Rotenberry, who spoke on the unique education challenges facing community colleges’ game development programs. Overall, the IGDA’s presence was widely felt and a positive impact on the event. The summit as a whole was a wonderful opportunity, not only to

learn how other schools and professionals are handling the demands of game education, but also as a chance to meet with other educators and gather inspiration from the work they are doing. 

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IGDA @ GES North America By Dan Carreker

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Representing the Global Game Jam By Foaad Khosmood

realistic projects resulting in tangible products in their higher education careers. GGJ activity is rapid prototyping in its exciting essence. In 48 hours, a brand new team of game developers go from “hello my name is” to “this is the functional game we built.” The experience is valuable far beyond the weekend.

ecently, I had the honor of representing the IGDA Global Game Jam team at the Game Education Summit North America. Taking place on the University of Southern California campus June 1516, the summit featured a diverse set of talks and panels covering topics from curriculum management to video game ethics. Our presentation was called “Learn by Doing: Global Game Jam lessons for the classroom.” In the talk, we outlined 10 aspects of GGJ that can directly benefit university-level game programs. I will briefly share some of these lessons below:

2. Opportunity for failure: In his 1992 book, “To Engineer is Human,” Henri Petroski argues that success in any engineering effort is impossible without experiencing failure. It is the evaluation and modifications made after experiencing failure that lead to better production. GGJ brings this principle home in a direct way. You may go through several failures, or you may not succeed at all in creating what you set out to do, but you will be forced to think about why this was and how you can overcome it.

1. Rapid prototyping experience: One of the most difficult aspects of software engineering to teach is the software development cycles of which the spiral model of development is most popular. Most undergraduates will be lucky if they get three or four

3. Working in diverse teams: GGJ participants are not just computer science undergrads. At a typical jam, you are likely to encounter people from other disciplines, the industry, indie development and gaming newbies from all walks of life placing their visions on the table. Games are diverse things, requiring expertise not just in coding, but also, for example, in art, writing, music, psychology and humanities. Diverse teams are required to make good games. In addition to teams, GGJ participants in 2010 were part of a global community with individuals from some 40 countries around the world.

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4. Tools assessment and selection: Game programs and curricula need to keep up and constantly re-evaluate the latest technologies and tools they use in the classroom. GGJ is a great way to observe in practice what tools are useful and worthy of adoption. Many jams precede their participation with some classes about a particular tool or technology. 5. Research and user studies: GGJ, as the single largest game jam event in the world, offers a unique opportunity for research scientists to get valuable feedback on technologies or social dynamics. 6. Promotion: For school departments, GGJ can be an excellent venue to promote and publicize the school’s curriculum, major or certificate program. If such a program does not yet exist, GGJ offers an exciting and immediate way to showcase the benefits of it to both students and administrators alike. Students can point to GGJ projects in their portfolios when applying for jobs, and industry reps that often appear as judges or sponsors use the event for recruitment. For more information on GGJ, visit globalgamejam.org. Special thanks to Susan Gold and Ian Schreiber for helping create this presentation. 

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LUDOLITERACY: A REVIEW By Suzanne Freyjadis

ose Zagal’s new book Ludoliteracy: Defining, Understanding, and Supporting Games Education published by the ETC Press is a much welcomed primer on the study and teaching of games and what Zagal refers to as a new form of literacy in which he examines how educators teach as well as how students learn. In Ludoliteracy, Zagal uses a broad definition of game education, which includes the “social scientific approach (studying the effects of games on people), [the] humanities approach (studying the meaning and context of games and games as cultural artifacts), or [the] industry and engineering approach (creating new technologies used in games and understanding the design and development of games).” By including the full range of game education programs in his research, Zagal’s work is applicable to the majority of game education programs. To understand the current pedagogy being used in the classroom and the effectiveness of these methods, he interviewed faculty from a wide range of institutions about their experience teaching game education classes. Zagal conducted 12 interviews from 10 institutions of higher learning from eight countries.

Gender parity was also considered since only three of the 12 interviewees were female. From these interviews, Zagal found that although it might be beneficial for students to have experience as game players, the fact that most gamers tend to specialize in one particular genre made it difficult for a student’s expertise to be transferable to games in other genres and students were often unfamiliar with games and gaming systems that predated their generation. In an attempt to help understand how to better educate students so they would be well-versed in the concepts and technologies relevant for a game studies program, Zagal studied the effectiveness of two tools. One is a blogging program called GameLog that allows students to blog about their in-game experiences with the goal they are reflective of their gaming experience in an attempt to help them think more critically about the games they play. The second tool Zagal studies is the Game Ontology Project, which is a Wiki page that was established in such a way that it is accessible for students to participate in real scholarship without feeling like their endeavors

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are simply eye candy. Students are able to add examples from games to help further define various academic terms. Through the student’s work, they are learning about current game scholarship as well as contributing meaningfully to real scholarship. Each addition a student makes by using a gaming example adds to the quality of the scholarship and makes the project a richer resource for research. The students also create their own knowledge by using the system of relationships assigned in the ontology. Zagal’s work is well-researched and delves into both theoretical questions about pedagogy and game education as well as offering some highly practical insights on how to think about helping students get the most out of their educations. Zagal not only has impressive scholarship, but he also has impressive methodology. He clearly is interested in presenting a broad perspective on game education through his inclusion of institutions globally and is also very inclusive of the female voice. The quotes from both students and educators are well-divided between male and female interviewees. 

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news

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Introducing Gordon Bellamy By Cat Wendt

Tuesday night I had a meeting with our new Acting Executive Director, Gordon Bellamy, just so we could get some face time and talk about some of the IGDA projects we’re working on together now that he’s taken over for Joshua. We were both trying to pack a lot into a busy day, so we decided to meet up for a working dinner. He picked the place, but when I heard where we were getting together I knew it was going to be fabulous. He chose one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles - Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood. You kind of have to see it to truly appreciate it, but let’s just say there’s a sparkling disco ball spinning proudly morning, noon, and night. Gordon and I happily noshed on fried macaroniand-cheese balls and he told me about his background in the game industry while several televisions blared dancehall remixes of popular music videos in the background. He doesn’t look like it (he looks much younger to me) but he’s an old-timer in the game business. A 17-year veteran of the entire life-cycle of games, he’s put his Harvard Engineering degree to good work. He did the successful indie startup thing, sold the company, worked for publishers, was an Executive Director for another game industry association, convinced television to cover the game industry better, worked as a producer in television with a focus on the game industry, and now he says he’s excited to be back in a nonprofit association setting where he can channel his enthusiasm for the people behind the games. He’s seen this industry from all sides and has come to the conclusion that what he wants to be most is a strong advocate for game developers. We talked about his time living in San Francisco and working at EA and the two things that were cemented in his mind after that experience - a passion for treating people well, and the belief that video game development is a hard-earned skill. He even did a hilarious impression AUGUST | 2010

of developers as coal-miners. Then he would ask me long, open ended questions so he’d have time to swoop in and eat some of my French fries. When I turned the tables on him and asked about some of his major goals in the months ahead, he said he wants to: “tap into the collective talent and intellect of our members, continue to drive the organization forward, and effect tangible change in the industry. Game developers can sometimes fall into a trap of believing they’re an island - the IGDA has the unique ability to welcome diverse individuals from all over the globe into a strong, supportive community. We need to make sure we’re reaching out to the people who need us most. At the same time, it’s important that we also focus on optimizing the experience of the members we have now. I strongly feel that all developers, from QA to indies to writers - all developers in all aspects of development - deserve to be treated with respect. We all work hard at our craft, and it is a craft, so it’s vital that we pool our collective abilities to ensure we’re making great games while also living good, healthy lives.” And he was so excited about it the words seemed to tumble out all in one breath. His enthusiasm is contagious. Gordon was elected to the Board of Directors last year and has been chair of the board since March. You can read a little more about Gordon’s background here. He’s all about reaching out to members and getting the two-way conversation flowing. He wouldn’t let me publish this article without putting his email address in it – so here you go. Drop him a note at gordon@igda.org with your feedback and ideas for the org. He promises he’ll get back to you as soon as he can – maybe while he’s eating fried macaroni-and-cheese balls at Hamburger Mary’s. 

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EVENTCALENDAR August 18-21

September 15-17

2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games Games have proven to be an ideal domain for the study of computational intelligence as not only are they fun to play and interesting to observe, but they provide competitive and dynamic environments that model many real-world problems. Additionally, methods from computational intelligence promise to have a big impact on game development, assisting designers and developers and enabling new types of computer games. The 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games brings together leading researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to discuss recent advances and explore future directions in this quickly moving field. http://game.itu.dk/cig2010/

Fun and Games Conference Fun and Games 2010 is a single-track, 2-day conference where academics and practitioners can interact together in a playful event that marries the best of academic writing with the most innovative user experiences. The conference invites original contributions from designers, developers and researchers in computer games, experience design and ‘fun’. http://fng2010.org

August 20 2010 2K BotPrize Contest The aim of the contest is to see if a computer game playing bot can play like a human. In the contest, bots try to convince human players that they are also actually human players. Eleven international teams have entered for this year’s contest. www.botprize.org

September 3-5 PAX Prime Since its inception 2004, PAX has grown to be the largest gaming festival in North America. PAX Prime is held annually on or before Labor Day weekend in Seattle www.paxsite.com

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and save up to 40% off conference passes. Learn more about GDC Online and your registration options at www.GDCOnline.com

Submit events to newsletter@igda.org

September 29 Representing the Games Industry Client 2010 Live seminar for attorneys who represent clients in intellectual property-related, technology, or entertainment fields; videogame developers and publishers’ counsel; managers and executives with entertainment industry responsibilities. http://www.pli.edu/product/seminar_detail.asp?id=96551

October 5-8 GDC Online Austin, Texas GDC Online is the community meeting point for developers and business professionals looking to distill best practices, exchange ideas, and take full advantage of the opportunities of connected gaming. GDC Online offers an in-depth review of diverse online game genres, development platforms, and industry trends. Join industry trailblazers from Bigpoint, Disney, Playdom, Tencent, Relic, Zynga and more to discuss best practices and provide insight on the future of online games. Register by September 1st AUGUST | 2010

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