Richard Bartle (I include his book, Designing Virtual Worlds, in the Reading List <- for serious game designers) spoke this week at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival (poorly scheduled for the same time as SIGGRAPH). You will, of course, remember Dr. Bartle for being co-creator of the first ever multi-user dungeon (MUD); Bartle is currently a Principal Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems at Essex University. I'd say all that adds up to some chops - at least when it comes to game design and higher education.
You can imagine, then, how thrilled I am that Bartle is echoing my clarion call for more and better game design and development programs at the university level. In an amusing twist, he laments that public money in the UK is going toward games-as-anything-but-games program(me)s as a means of legitimizing the industry, but I digress.
Most interestingly, Bartle notes that only "modern" UK universities, those that used to be polytechnic or vocational schools, are offering degree programs in this space. The implication of this is that those who are entering the world of game production will do so without benefit of any particular liberal arts or philosophy education prior to receiving a degree.
In recent months, I have had discussions with two public universities and a private/corporate post-secondary institute, both interested in introducing serious gaming into their curricula (each from a different part of the institution: corporate development, journalism, computer science, student placement). In each case, we have talked about the difference between game design and game production, and how integrated these activities are. For the moment, the complexity of the knot that represents the practice of game development together with the complexity that is a university system have derailed these organizations in their progress.
Failing to meet this challenge head-on today, however daunting it may seem, will only make for a thornier problem tomorrow, if Katie Salen is to be believed (she is!). In addition to having co-authored the seminal text for Intro to Game Design and her faculty post at New School (also on my Reading List), she has designed a middle school for the New York Public School system based entirely on gaming. She spoke just this week at SIGGRAPH, where she pointed out that kids don't think of themselves as gamers; the concepts of networks, play, and everyday life are already intertwined in their experience. "Gaming is more collective, not individual," she says. "Kids are learning how to play from each other and mentor from each other."
But to play and mentor together successfully, kids need games that provoke their minds in appropriate ways. They need social gaming networks that facilitate positive behaviors and sideline negative ones. They need games that match both learning requirements and social/emotional maturity. They need a means to use/manipulate/interact with content in ways that they can't otherwise do in their classrooms or homes.
Who will design and develop these games for the next set of middle school students? Who will have the technical skills and the liberal arts knowledge to bring all this together?
Understanding learners' minds, learning content, and learning behavior requires study together with experience in the world. Developing successful serious games requires this understanding. The few programs (<- look left) available to those seeking such knowledge and understanding expose students to a cross-section of the liberal arts together with technical skills. But they are oh-so-few in number.
I'm serious,
Anne
