[game_edu] re: Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers

[Ian Schreiber]

This is quite the timely thread. I'm the opposite of Hopson, a developer who's just starting to get his feet wet in academia, and my class lecture last Monday was about the difference between Game Development and Game Studies, and why there are so few bridges between academia and industry.
   
  There are some academic papers that have managed to create a powerful enough message that they're relatively well-known in the industry: Bartle's player types, LeBlanc's MDA framework, Church's Formal Abstract Design Tools. Those academics who want their work to be applied in industry would do well to study those few works that have succeeded.
   
  Things we discovered through class discussion:
  * Industry/academic relations only happen if there's a clear win-win. Both sides are run very differently, so these situations are rare.
  * Both companies and universities are large, slow, plodding beasts that move relatively quickly. Most successful bridges are formed between two individuals, not two organizations. Unfortunately, this also makes the bridges fragile: if either individual leaves their post, all relations evaporate instantly.
  * There is a surprising amount of condescending attitude on both sides. Industry workers think of academics as failed game developers who couldn't cut it in the "real world"; academics look at developers as uneducated brutes who couldn't even bother to get more than a Bachelor's degree. Both sides are wrong, but reality is less important than perception.
   
  Kids say the darndest things :-)
   
  I have my own plans for game research. I plan to put together some small, experimental game prototypes -- sort of the game equivalent of an experimental short film. I expect most of these to fail, just like most research isn't groundbreaking and most commercial games lose money... hence making them small, so that I'll hopefully have a couple of shining successes in the sea of mediocrity.
   
  This would appear to satisfy all of Hopson's criteria:
  ROI: I'm making these projects on my own, devoting no more than a month's worth of spare time to any single one. My investment is effectively zero. I'm doing this because I enjoy game development, so if any of my designs are commercializable that's a huge success.
  Speaking the language: A game that you can download and play is the ultimate communication tool within the industry. Everyone knows how to play a game, and it's instantly obvious whether the game is fun and interesting.
  Smaller, Faster, Cheaper: Any project that can be completed by me in forty hours or less of my own spare time should qualify.
  Prescriptive, not Descriptive: Actually, simply releasing a game prototype into the freeware space doesn't tell developers what to do with it... but on the other hand, I know game designers who can't draw conclusions from a research paper but who have no problems identifying cool mechanics in other games.
  Prove It: a game prototype is the ultimate proof. It's either fun or it isn't.
  The Customer Is Always Right: here I take some liberties since I still consider myself at least half-developer... so I just ask myself ;)
   
  - Ian

 
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