[game_edu] What would you want from a game company?

[Dan Carreker]

Hey Ian,

 

I'll tell you the one thing that's been on my mind re: resources: Sample
games.

 

I would love to see many of the classic and pioneering games bundled for use
by schools. And I believe there are two feasible means for this to come
about.

 

One is to release education bundles. In 2000, PC Gamer Magazine released a
free CD in one of their issues with 12 classic games (X-Com, Ultima I, Wing
Commander, Duke Nuke-em, etc.) Each of these were tested by the developers
to make sure they were compatible with modern hardware and treated -- by
Activision (where I worked at the time) at least -- as an OEM product. I see
no reason why a curriculum publisher could not arrange a similar deal. It
would likely be easiest to release one bundle per company, i.e. an EA pack,
an Activision pack, etc. but as long as the games are older than 3-5 years I
doubt it would be very expensive. Furthermore, it could be done as a license
agreement based on the number of computers encouraging bulk sales of games
that are doing nothing but sitting in a vault somewhere.

 

Alternatively, a service such as Steam could host games that the schools'
could license. Of course they do this now, but most of the games are 1)
fairly new and 2) priced a little more expensive than I think most schools
could afford (once you start talking about multiple accounts for dozens of
games.) 

 

The REAL crown though would be samples of builds at various stages. I know
these are usually VERY guarded by the companies, but you can learn a lot
about the design challenges and the design process when you see how the game
evolve over their development and having various sample buggy versions of a
the level from game would be fantastic.

 

There are plenty of other things I think would be beneficial to school I
teach at, but this would be the one thing that would get me the most
excited. I've even been toying with the idea of looking for investors to
pursue this, but all the entrepreneurs I know are very tight with their
finances right now. 

 

--Dan Carreker

 

 

 

 

  _____  

From: Ian Schreiber [mailto:ai864 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 5:40 PM
To: game_edu at igda.org
Subject: [game_edu] What would you want from a game company?

 

Hi everyone,

Just had an interesting discussion with a colleague about potential value
that a large game company (something like EA, Blizzard, Zynga, etc.) could
offer schools on a large scale.

I realize there is always the danger that the "value" could be a
thinly-veiled sales pitch for "how to educate your students to get hired at
our studio, screw liberal arts and screw the rest of the industry"... but
for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume it's not like that, that
this would be a genuine offer of assistance.

This could be anything: resources for students, resources for faculty,
whatever. Assume an offer of time, not money. (Saying "they could give a
generous grant to our institution" is too easy and too obvious :-)

What kinds of things could a game company offer that would make you
absolutely thrilled if you saw it on, say, this mailing list? I had my own
ideas, but would be interested in seeing other opinions.

If you're wondering why I'm asking, it's because I get the feeling that a
lot of things that would be of huge value to us collectively are things that
some companies would be very willing to give in the name of improving game
education, and it's just a matter of using the strength of our numbers (and
the numbers of the IGDA in general) to make it happen. So far most of these
sorts of academic-industry collaborations have been between a single school
and a single studio, which just means that every one of us has to reinvent
the wheel with every studio. It'd be nice to find a better way.

Thanks,
- Ian

 

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