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

[Gregory Walek]

 Ah, So Ian is looking for a one to many approach. One of the first
things I thought of is how can said person work with the Ed Sig. Then
how can they work one to many outside of the Educational Sig. Here's a
few things that might be helpful to suggest. 

 

* Help with the IDGA Curriculum Framework. 

Speaking of which, work on the next iteration should get started soon!

* Share Slides and Speeches. Particularly with GDC talks, hosting them
outside of Think Group services GDC site. 

* If there's a Sig out there already that fits their interests, try and
get them to volunteer time to improve an existing Sig. We should be
looking to these other sigs for more content and help anyways (As my
current journey in IP-land shows) 

* Follow Id's path with GPL'ing source code after several years

* For Those whom support modding, adding academic resources, a means  to
understand the engine so that it can be taught in the classroom is
essential. This is bridging the technology gap in educators. We should
be thanking them regardless for supporting moding.

* Encourage them to write! It doesn't have to be a blog, It can be an
article here or there. Truly honest postmortems are always helpful. Tell
them don't worry about grammar and such. Get the information down. There
are people who would be willing to work and edit the piece with him. 

* If they want to get VERY ambitious, then show them the courses Ian
Schreiber has worked on these last two summers. Tell them to try
something like that. 

 

 

From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of William Huber
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 3:34 AM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] What would you want from a game company?

 

For me as a researcher, as well as for graduate students interested in
questions of the pipeline, engineering issues, etc., a dream-case would
be access to the entire archive of material related to a single (perhaps
historical) project - everything from GDDs and TDDs to meeting notes,
prototypes, storyboards, email threads, asset archives, version control
/ source control logs, marketing reports, even, if available,
back-of-napkin type material, for a major title (AAA). I know it is
asking for the moon, but someone with a foundation in the right types of
analysis (e.g., ANT) could do wonders with that kind of material.

 

2010/8/13 Simon Rozner <infonaut at gameonaut.com>

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: 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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