[game_edu] Open Letter

Sun Nov 12 04:44:36 EST 2006

Hi,

I value the basic thrust of John's article (getting industry and 
academia understand each others interests and approach better, and 
thereby make them more mutually beneficial), but I also experience it to 
be a bit one-sided. On the other hand, much of the basic research (the 
fundamental, new-theory-creating aspects of work within humanities, 
human sciences, technology research, design research etc.) is not 
directly application-oriented. Rather, the basic task of researchers is 
to advance scientific knowledge and the value of their work will be 
primarily evaluated within the scientific and scholarly community, 
within the processes of peer review. Here in Finland and Europe, we are 
regularly working with numerous games companies and have positive 
experiences from research collaboration both with large and smaller 
corporations (incl. studios). The real key is to have the right person 
as the contact point within the company, someone who understands both 
academic and industrial world and who can work as translator for opening 
up the space for fruitful, overlapping interests. Microsoft obviously 
has such in John and others like him, and large companies like Nokia or 
Sony also have their in-house researchers. The smaller the company, the 
more limited are the chances are of fitting in such persons to the dev 
teams, of course. But with the importance of R&D, I can only hope that 
we do not only have a single-sided responsibility of over-busy academics 
to try and find the extra time to learn to "speak industry", but we will 
also see equal efforts within the over-busy industry folks learning to 
understand the world of science and scholarship. After all, it is those 
working daily in games development who have the best possibilities of 
seeing what are the opportunities and consequences of research results 
for some particular products or industry processes. -- And rather than 
only thinking about the next product release for a minute, we have such 
issues facing us as the future of games culture, the role and 
opportunities of games in society, and development of new scientific 
work that is fundamentally based on understanding of games, 
interactivity and psychological character of gameplay experiences. 
Everyone's efforts are needed to face these challenges.

-- 
Best regards,

    Frans

**  Frans Mäyrä * Professor, PhD * Hypermedia Laboratory **
**  University of Tampere * Games Research Lab * Finland **
* www.uta.fi/hyper * http://gamelab.uta.fi * www.digra.org *
** frans.mayra at uta.fi *gsm +358503367650 *tel +358335517933 **
  *** www.unet.fi/fransblog **** www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra ***

John Hopson:
> Hey folks,
> 
>  
> 
>             Susan forwarded me some of your discussion and I’d like to 
> offer a couple of follow-up comments.  The rules and recommendations in 
> the article are essentially the ones I follow on a daily basis when I 
> work with product teams to get changes made to games.  The tone of the 
> article is certainly snarky, because that made it a more fun article to 
> write and (I hope) to read, but the content represents the best way I 
> know to work with dev teams.  I have to prove the ROI of my suggestions, 
> I have to work within the developer culture, and I have to find “magic 
> bullets” that fix their problems within their budget and schedule.  It’s 
> not necessarily the way my research persona wants to do things, but it’s 
> what creates the maximum impact of my research on my products.
> 
>  
> 
> The other thing I’d like to mention is that while the article clumped 
> “the games industry” as a single entity, that’s obviously not true.  
> Some parts of the industry are vastly more accessible than others.  In 
> particular, the “casual games” folks (web games, cell phone games, xbox 
> live arcade, etc.) are in a much better position to experiment and try 
> new things than most of the industry.  Their projects are smaller and 
> have more room for risks and experimentation than the AAA blockbusters, 
> and a single convert can take your work a lot farther.  Those types of 
> games are also more suitable for work in a classroom or a research lab.
> 
>  
> 
> My favorite comment on the article was when one of my early reviewers 
> told me that I switched back and forth between identifying myself with 
> the researchers or with the industry.  Well, /yes/.
> 
>  
> 
> John Hopson
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> *From:* game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] *On 
> Behalf Of *Susan Gold
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 11, 2006 4:20 PM
> *To:* IGDA Game Education Listserv
> *Subject:* [game_edu] Open Letter
> 
>  
> 
> I think one of the unsaid Education SIG goals is about creating bridges 
> to industry. I think that we all have a lot to learn from one another. 
>  To accomplish just that, I have invited John Hopson to join our 
> listserv. I think that the discussion online can only be furthered by 
> creating a two way dialog.
> 
> As many of you know we are working feverishly on creating the right kind 
> of portal to games related education, we have a large curriculum program 
> that is about to start online. We are going to ask each of you to 
> participate of course. Currently we are looking for some testers to help 
> us in making the experience smooth for the rest of us. Please contact me 
> if you would like to assist while we work through beta.
> 
> The IGDA Education SIG Curriculum Workshop/GDC content will soon to be 
> finalized. Drew Davidson and his committee have already organized an R&D 
> Industry Panel as a part of the workshop. Personally, I could not sit 
> through another HR chat on how to do a demo reel. The Workshop will be 
> very hands on this year, even working lunches. We have a lot squeezed 
> into two days, and plan to make this a tremendous learning opportunity 
> for each of us. I am sorry that I can only offer a teaser of things to 
> come. Many more details to follow within the week.
> 
> Susan
> -- 
> Prof. Susan Gold
> IGDA Education SIG Chairperson
> education_sig at igda.org
> 
> 
> “There’s this game where you put in a dollar and you win four quarters. 
> I win every time!”
> - Chris Griffin, Family Guy
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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