[game_edu] RE: watered down CS programs

[Mark Baldwin]

I'm a old time designer/developer that has moved into academia in the last
year.   To some extent I would take more of a vocational attitude both
because I degreed in Engineering (a field that requires practical education)
and I want the students to be competitive when entering the workforce.
That means that the student must understand how to create games and have a
portfolio to prove it.

But I am very concerned about this massive growth in trying to teach game
development.   My experience has shown that there is minimum understanding
of the field.  For example, one school I was advising was preparing to offer
a degree in "Game Design".   I looked at the curriculum, and there was
absolutely nothing in the whole curriculum about game design, it was all
game art.   Why did this happen?   The school already had a degree in
Graphic Design, which was an art degree, and they assumed Game Design was
exactly the same thing!

I can list half a dozen other horror stories like this.

Making the curriculum abstract adds to this problem, because then you can
excuse any lack of knowledge in the field by arguing that such knowledge is
'vocational' and therefore not to be included.

I'm a strong believer in breadth of education, but there must be some actual
knowledge about the field being taught.

A film school must teach how to write a script or use a camera.  A school
teaching game development must equally address the practical issues of game
development (or the specific field within game development).

What concerns me is the potential failure of academia to supply students the
industry wants and needs.   Too much failure and the industry will
completely reject academia.

Mark Baldwin

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Mark Baldwin 
Baldwin Consulting
685 Trailside Rd 
Golden, CO 80401 
phone: 303-526-9169 
mobile: 303-949-5628 
http://baldwinconsulting.org
mark at baldwinconsulting.org 
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