What sparked my desire to do this lecture came from a conversation I had while standing outside a GDC party for Steam/Valve. While talking to a man whom had at least 15 years in the industry, he really brought to light the disconnect between academia and the industry. We got on the education subject and snapped back by saying he preferred students from DigiPen and Fullsail because they do what they are told. I have a much different take on the situation as I consider students from these and other schools with much more respect than he did. I want to make sure there are enough students out there to prove me right and him completely wrong.

Here’s the text I used in applying for the PAX lecture. Obviously not set in stone, but I’d love your feedback as I start shaping this lecture in the next few months.

Title:
Making a Career in Video Games

One-Paragraph Description:
Are you looking for a job with a game studio, or a career in interactive media? Learn how to identify the styles in game development curricula and the tools to help you find the best education for more than a job, but a lifetime’s work in the gaming industry.

Is there anything else you think we [PAX staff] should know?
This lecture will provide tools and perspective for finding the right curriculum for the student. This entails a two part approach. First, a student needs to start figuring out what direction he or she wants to take. The second part is knowing what information to extract from potential institutions. From this foundation, attendants can make solid decisions on which schools are applicable to their educational goals. Potential undergraduate, graduate, and transfer students will all find this lecture helpful.

I include my credentials to represent my own personal expertise, but it does not illustrate endorsement by any current or former employers.

Credentials of Highlight:
* First recipient of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at Emerson College.
Created the first BFA New Media curriculum at Emerson College, Boston.
* Emerson College, Enrollment & Student Affairs
Created tools and content related to admissions and enrollment for duties related to being an admission counselor.

For more information about me, visit http://segonmedia.com/

Do you want a job or a career?

A lot of the talk and guidance about video game education is rooted in getting a job with a studio. Yes, being employed is apart of a career and one seeks an education to become employable. I’m not questioning this aspect. What concerns me is the debate is geared towards getting that one job. There isn’t talk about the sustainability for one to adapt though their life time in interactive media. Simply training for getting hired out of college, not as a practitioner of the field.

by Sklathill

Part of this comes from the current venues of advice one can seek. Naturally one would look towards the veterans in the industry as cues for being successful. While this advice is very valuable, the material from them seems more about getting the job rather than forming a career. The veterans of this industry created careers in a way that can’t be duplicated; The industry is created now. The experiences of our veterans can’t be duplicated. I wish there were more long-term advice applicable to today, but right now one has to extrapolate how the experience of the vets can be made in current times, and how it can’t. This kind of nuance isn’t realized by a potential applicant from high school, nor is anyone pointing this out. The debate is stuck at ‘get a job,’ not ‘make a living.’

On the academic side, there’s two extremes going on which don’t help anyone. On the traditional academics side: There are individual professors doing great work across many different schools. I’ll name drop my alama mater, Emerson College, but other schools like USC’s Interactive Media program and Michigan State’s Media Arts & Tech program. The problems are trying to advertise these programs. I see a lot of failures from admission offices to assist applicants in informing the program properly. Professors should be working on teaching and leave the admission office to sell the school. This requires the admission office to be knowledgeable about the climate of the academic landscape and how the program they represent etches their unique space. There isn’t much of that going on from my experience. The reasons are varied for each school. Some schools simply have uninformed admission consolers. Some schools don’t want to pitch full-blown game development degrees in fear their program isn’t adequate enough. Great work is being done, but they aren’t informing potential applicants properly.

The other end of the spectrum are establishments that go all-in with video games as their only avenue of training. DigiPen, Full Sail, and schools advertising game production on late-night cable. For the most part, the marketing with these schools fills the void the traditional schools create. A lot of the marketing messages are along the lines of “we only focus on games/media” as to imply liberal art schools set back the student. My largest fear with these institutions is too much focus on current production tools and methods; Less on forming a background on larger principles that aid in a career. Producing a project soon and often is a sexy selling point, but at what point does it become a cheep thrill at the expense of a lasting education?

At this point I feel I’ve sealed my fate in trying to bring a more substantive debate on what an education in interactive media means. I’m starting with formulating and applying to conduct a lecture at PAX in Seattle. It’s safe to say there will be enough interested people looking to go into higher education in interactive media. My goal is to get these people to ask the right questions to themselves and potential educational institutions. I think it’s an attractive lecture to have, I hope the organizers agree. If it turns out well, I can reprise at PAX East in Boston.

¹ Still waiting for the recording to be released. Will post when this happens.

“We are not here to compete with the games industry,” he says. “We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses.”

“Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don’t know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don’t know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited.”

This statement really rubbed me the wrong way on a few levels. The academic institution is skipping an extremely teachable moment by not incorporating IP rights and attribution of work. Will mistakes be made? Very much so. This is an educational institution and mistakes are part of the learning process. Avoiding the issue doesn’t make the issue go away, only defred for the student post-graduation. I can’t see how a student can be prepared to work in a field of intelectual property without understanding the basic law and practice of IP.

The counterpoint is the position is schools should teach the use and practice of tools and the IP should be left for law students. While I’m not claiming that each student should be prepared for entering a pre-law program, IP practice is the core integral part of being a professional artist. You don’t have to fully agree with the practices, but knowing the basics of how business is conducted seperates the professionals from the hobbyists. By denying students how to run the business, DigiPen seems limit student’s ability to become involved with being their own independent participants of this art form. The DigiPen curriculum seems to make worker bees for the game industry, rather than practicianers of interactive entertainment.

Wanting to work for a company is certainly a good choice to make in a career. Hell, that’s the choice I made for myself in my career. I was afforded that choice from my curriculum at Emerson College, rather than forced to that choice as DigiPen’s IP policy states. My education allowed me the choice to either start my own studio or incorporate myself into an existing studio. In either case, I was prepared to be an active and educated individual, rather than one who simply followed orders.

This was afforded to me though the shared distribution policy. While I own the IP rights to Antidote and can do pretty much what I want with the thesis (with some exceptions of commercial software I used), Emerson College has shared publication rights to showcase Antidote. I can do whatever I want with the game, so long as Emerson can show the piece. This way, any IP claims are rested on me, the student. Not the college. Emerson’s not the only insitution with this policy, but it’s also one of the reasons why I chouse to go to Emerson.

All said, the best policy that meets everyone’s needs is one that passes this test:

Can the student choose to distribute the IP under a Creative Commons license?

I think it’s very important for an academic institution to be able to showcase all work its students submit in their educational career. This is how an academic institution can illustrate the work done at the school for many purposes including enrollment and more importantly academic performance. What’s also important is respect for the students’ work. A policy that divorces the rights away from a student is simply insulting to the student.

Notice that I use the word ‘choose’ and not require. For DigiPen, not only are students not allowed to do a traditional copyright IP license, but they can not choose a copyleft IP license either. In fact, the DigiPen policy prevents one from using any copyleft as DigiPen owns everything. Any sharing is forbidden. There’s simply no choice in the matter. Having the choice of copyleft means that right or left versions can be imployed. Even if the school requires sharing of distribtuion rights, any IP license can be picked.

I do hope this topic gets more attention as it is a very serious aspect of an education in a creative field. Students should know these topics as it is apart of their careers. DigiPen and other schools seem to avoid these topics for the sake of avoiding teaching. This can not be tolerated by anyone.

Academia for the video game industry is a topic rather close to me. It’s safe for me to say that I created a good chunk of Emerson’s program on game design and writing for I had to make it from scratch. I had a make-your-own major that happened to be degree on the books. Course, I was the first to actually go for a BFA in New Media and to create a curriculum based on design and writing of interactive storytelling. At the time, there wasn’t a convincing curriculum that attracted to me, so making my own program was the only way I could be satisfied.

As to why I’m taking education as my first major post on my Media Blog, it’s the way in which one creates media, in this case video games, that makes my connection. Yea justification!There are many issues college with the in interactive electronic entertainment. These problems are shared between the educational institutions, the commercial electronic games industry, the students, and academic/admission consolers. It takes years for academia to figure out good methods of teaching any subject matter. Only with a carful dance between the industry itself and the academic world can a solid curriculums be formed. Without some form of industry involvement, students will not be properly prepared for the industry. Too much industry involvement and the school produces one-trick ponies.

But what defines the difference? There are obvious bad programs (hint: they air TV ads), but how can we begin to calculate a quality school? No school will be perfect, but what model should students be looking for? The first thing that comes to mine is the scope of the program:

A Game Production Curriculum is not contained in one program.

Let’s say I walked outside and asked random people on the street the following question:

List as many different roles or jobs involved in creating a movie.

I would gather that the list would be a decent size; At least 10 or so. After that, I ask this question:

List as many different roles or jobs involved in creating a video game.

They may only be one position given: Programmer. Other positions, not so much. While this is a larger problem involving credit titles and general impression of the industry itself, the idea of programmer as the soul creator is obviously misguided. This was true in the 80′s where one (usually a) man developed the entire game besides box art. This is clearly not the case.

So when you see a curricula advertised as ‘The game degree’, that’s a red flag right there. Very broadly, there are many areas involved in producing one title:

• Producing, Directing, etc
• Writing / Design
• Art Production
• Sound Production
• Programming

While someone working in this industry must have a basic understanding of each area, there are ultimately a point where one must pick one or two focuses. No one program can contain expertise in more than one of these fields. Proficiency yes, but not expertise. This is the hard part in education; Picking a dedicated path. Once you get exposed to other things, students may find that while they wanted to be one thing when they started, they actually were geared towards another area completely. This is where the proficiency aspect comes in. Exposing a student to the other fields at a basic level not only helps the student understand the other aspects of the media, but proposes the opportunity of a different direction.

Art vs. Tech

The unique aspect about video games is the marriage between the artistic and technological. This media is not at the point where producing a text is easy. Currently, anyone can make a film. You only need to look at YouTube to see this. The technology of cameras, audio equipment, and editing tools are simple enough to use with the board understanding of storytelling using moving pictures. Interactive media? Not even close. The technology bar is very high in comparison to other media, so there’s a odd dance between the artistic and the technological.

Even for film, the ease of production wasn’t easy as it is now. Over the course of time, not only the tools but the understanding of the media have evolved. Video games are still in an infancy where development isn’t as easy, nor is the understanding of our media as widely established. Because of this, the amount of work involved in education requires separate areas of study.

My time at Emerson College was almost primarily on the art side. With exceptions of solid classes of 3D Animation by John Craig Freeman, my undergraduate work consisted of academic study of media crit and design/writing of interactive media, but completely divorced of rich technical background. I knew this entering in the program and it’s what I wanted. My technical background has been self-taught and worked very well. Not adequate enough for a career in programming, but programming has never been my intent of a career path.

Seg’s View of a quality educational environment for interactive media

At this point, I can not see a quality academic institution that does not carry both artistic based programs and technical based programs. While there are rare exceptions, not all techies are quality designers, not all designers are quality techies. Nor should they be. An institution needs to recognize this by providing a set of curriculum programs with the connectivity between the different areas.

Let’s take a larger university as my example which I’ll call ‘College University’. College U has an existing program in Computer Science, audio/radio production, fine art (3D animation included), TV and/or film programs, and creative writing. These parts can contribute to a whole without much tweaking in most cases. And in most cases, there are specialization that already exist. What if we were to add specialization on each of these areas towards interactive entertainment?

For the CS department, a focus along the lines of ‘Entertainment Programming’ focus on graphics, sound, and interface technology that are applicable to working on game engines. 3D animation focusing on low-poly and creating works that plug into a game engine rather than a cohesive movie. And so on. No need for a new department, no need to have a completely separate island just because ‘games are in’.

There’s one issue to draw here and that’s creating a cohesiveness between the departments. There still needs to be some centered home for being able to connect all the different parts together and stimulate cross-department development. Ideally, the students should be working together in their different fields but be able to work together as a whole. Obviously the starting point is with a practicum style class that charges students to make one unified project. The result of a group of students pointing to one sizable project is much better than one student putting a project together ¹. This alone doesn’t solve the issues however. A collaborative effort must start from the first semester and focus on team-building skills and stay away from lone-wolf projects. Leaving the group work to advanced level work only hurts everyone. To be blunt, you want to kick out the individuals who don’t work well with others earlier than later.

So far the only program I see towards this goal is USC Interactive Media Devision. Almost a year ago I applied to this program for the above reason. I ended up not attending since I landed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work for Telltale, but while I had sever reservations about the larger USC institution, I heard nothing but positive aspects of the IMD. But we need more than one school and a series of specialized schools (DigiPen, DeVry, etc) to fill this void.

Moving Forward

This post was getting long so I didn’t cover my total analysis of other schools in similar fields. But I want to hear what everyone else thinks about the educational world of interactive entertainment. It’s not a topic covered too much, so let’s change that!I guess this is also a good point for you to check out the about page for a bit of disclosure. Mainly around the fact that I worked at Emerson College in enrollment after I graduated.

¹ I wasn’t completely alone and in debt to the wonderful people who did help me out. I am referring to the lack of support in engine building and what injured the project as a whole.