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

[Simon Rozner]

Hi Ian,
thanks for bringing this up. And Dan, gret suggestion.

One thing I think would be hugely interesting to have are design and  
technical docs at various stages. Even though same great ones are out  
there many are either incomplete and never show their evolution. To my  
students this would be fantastic to see and discuss and show design  
decisions. Also pre beta builds before and after a change was made  
would be superb so show changes in action. Now surely that would be  
difficult for copyrights and licensing etc issues.

Will think of more.

Cheers
Simon

DigiPen Singapore



Sent from my iPhone

On 12-Aug-2010, at 17:05, "Dan Carreker" <DanC at NarrativeDesigns.com>  
wrote:


> Hey Ian,

>

> I’ll tell you the one thing that’s been on my mind re: resources: Sa 

> mple 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 multi 

> ple 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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