When Jackie Gan first learned about Southern Methodist University's graduate-level video-game-design program, she was sitting stark naked in front of its inaugural class HEY! PICTURES, PLEASE!
Posted on 02/01/2005 1:52:53 PM PST by billorites
Plano, Tex. When Jackie Gan first learned about Southern Methodist University's graduate-level video-game-design program, she was sitting stark naked in front of its inaugural class -- 28 young men who had abandoned jobs as computer programmers, artists, or office workers to try to live out their fantasy of creating games for a living.
Ms. Gan, who was then a student at a nearby community college, was earning extra money by modeling for art classes. When she answered a call to model at Southern Methodist, she didn't realize that the class was part of a game-design program and that she might serve as the inspiration for a future video vixen. As she learned about the program, she became more and more intrigued.
When she returned for her next modeling session, she decided to have some fun with her assignment. "I was wearing this biker-gothic suit with a wig, boots, and sunglasses," she cheerfully recalls. "I stood with my hands on my hips like I was going to go over and kick someone."
But this time she brought along a sketchbook, filled with her own drawings of aliens, dragons, vampires, and demons -- images inspired by the fantasy novels and video games that had served as an escape since her rebellious teenage years. After showing her sketchbook to professors and students, she says, "I ran downstairs and picked up an application."
She is now one of two women enrolled in the second class at the university's Guildhall program, named after the centuries-old meeting places where artisans passed on their skills to apprentices. And she couldn't be happier. "They treat me as one of the guys," she says, "which is just what I wanted."
Ms. Gan is among hundreds of students flocking to new college and university programs that prepare students to enter the $10-billion-a-year video-game industry.
Southern Methodist started its 18-month certificate program in 2002 as a way to help students get a foot in the door of a booming industry that requires both creative and technical skills (The Chronicle, April 4, 2003). The Dallas area, where Southern Methodist is located, is considered a hotbed of video-game companies, several of which had asked the university to consider starting a program. Similar programs and courses are rapidly cropping up at other colleges, from small technical and art schools to major universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
But the going hasn't always been easy. Some in academe view the video-game industry with suspicion and question whether universities should be teaching courses -- let alone awarding degrees -- in game design. And hard-core gamers, many of whom worked their way up in gaming companies without any formal education, often scoff at the idea that students can learn the tricks of the trade in the classroom.
"This degree is still so new that there's no currency behind it yet," says Ted Brown, who graduated from Guildhall in December and is now looking for a job. "It raises eyebrows and may even seem pretentious to some people in the industry."
One of the top game developers in the country, who spoke at the Guildhall's first graduation ceremony, concurs.
"There's certainly a lot of skepticism in the professional community about college-trained developers," Warren Spector said in an interview. "That's only natural, given how new this training effort is."
Asked how graduates of the programs will fare in the job market, Mr. Spector said the industry giants were likely to be hiring. "Larger developers and publishers need so many bodies these days, what with their 200-plus person teams, that they'd be crazy not to encourage any form of preprofessional training they can find," said Mr. Spector, whose award-winning games include Deus Ex, Ultima Online VI, and Thief.
"It really is only a matter of time before game-development education is as well respected and as ubiquitous as film studies."
Mix of Skills
Southern Methodist's program, designed by leaders in the game industry, draws from the humanities as well as computer science. Entering students choose among three concentrations: art, "level design," or software development, and everyone takes introductory courses in game studies, which examine social, cultural, legal, and business aspects of game development.
Student teams collaborate on the games: The artists design the characters and props that will inhabit the games, the programmers tackle the technical aspects of building the games, and the level designers develop strategies and story lines to pull them all together. Their work is overseen by a dozen faculty members who have all worked in the video-game industry.
Peter E. Raad, executive director of the program, says: "We're flying this plane as we're building it. It's exciting, but it's also crazy." Mr. Raad is a professor of mechanical engineering at the university who heads its interdisciplinary Hart eCenter, which houses the Guildhall program.
Some would argue that it's crazy to even offer a program in video-game design at a research university.
"Given the vocal attention that violent games have gotten recently, many at the university were asking, Is this something we want to be involved in?" Mr. Raad concedes. "Initially, there was quite a bit of hesitation and in some cases, vehement opposition."
But he says he envisions a day when the program will be accepted not only as a training ground for game designers, but as an interdisciplinary center that works with other departments to create educational games.
Exciting Possibilities
"How gratifying it would be for the Guildhall to be working on projects that helped people overcome their fear of flying or that allowed psychiatrists to help young people with addictions and violence," he says. "In a language class, we could walk a French student down the Champs Élysées, where they could interact with a waiter who speaks perfect French. The possibilities are very exciting."
For now, most of the students just want to make games that entertain, producing software with plenty of gunslinging and karate-chopping.
Last month members of the program's inaugural class held an event to show off their projects to recruiters and prospective students.
Mr. Brown, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with the name of his team's game, Nicodemus, held his fidgety 1-year-old daughter while trying to carry on a conversation with fellow gamers. They were playing his creation on laptop computers while it was projected on a screen in front of the classroom.
Mr. Brown was one of three level designers on a team of a dozen students. It had taken them more than six months to make Nicodemus, a wild ride in which a warrior with a magic sword battles "undead soldiers" and a mad wizard. "I'm not one of the real geeks," Mr. Brown said jokingly, referring to his teammates who programmed the game.
He had been working in technical support for Apple Computer, looking for a way to break into the video-game industry, when he learned about the university's new program. "I was the guy at the end of the line in tech support, so I got all of the really bad calls," he said. "It's so nice to come home now with a smile on my face."
That kind of enthusiasm has thousands of applicants turning to video-game companies, hoping to carve careers out of their favorite pastime. But critics have accused some in the industry of exploiting their enthusiastic employees.
Last year workers at two video-game companies, including the industry giant Electronic Arts Inc., sued their employers for purportedly working them to exhaustion without paying overtime wages. The staff members said the problems were particularly acute during crunch time, just before games are released.
Crunch time is something that students at Guildhall are familiar with, having scrambled to finish their games and present them to an audience.
"Most people don't realize that game design is a serious career. They think, Oh, you just sit around and play games," says Jennifer Canada, a student in the program. "They have no idea -- I've never worked so hard in my life!"
At the program's recent showcase event, she explained the game she worked on, Rathe of the Wolf. The hero of the game battles pirates intent on uncovering an ancient artifact and ruling the seas. Ms. Gan, who also worked on the fast-paced game, described it as having a "cartoony style and no blood."
Ms. Canada followed an unlikely path to Guildhall. After graduating from Rice University with a bachelor's degree in vocal performance, she says, "most of my friends assumed I was going to be an opera singer." After deciding she didn't want to pursue opera as a career, she thought about switching to architecture, but decided that game design combined her interests in building, storytelling, and playing video games.
In an effort to attract more women like Ms. Gan and Ms. Canada to the male-dominated program, the university has teamed up with a group called WomenGamers.com to offer industry-supported scholarships for women. Five women have received a total of $14,000 through the new fund (The Chronicle, September 17).
The rest of the program's students come from a variety of backgrounds, and include a chemist, a lawyer, and a few students who served in the military. "We really thought we'd get the hard-core gamers, the ones who might be a little off the wall, who sit up all night playing games," says Kelli Hagen, a spokesman for the Guildhall program.
But it also drew people like Derrick O. Levy, one of two black students in the inaugural class. Mr. Levy, 33, was a manager at a high-tech company in Atlanta when he decided he wasn't enjoying his work. At Guildhall, he helped create a game called Kung-Fu Fighter, as well as a motorcycle simulation program. He's now working as a programmer on contract at a Dallas gaming company while he looks for a permanent job.
While Mr. Levy was demonstrating his game to onlookers, one of the program's instructors showed a game-company representative a two-dimensional board game that he used to teach level-design concepts to his students. The decidedly low-tech Space Hulk, which was spread out on a table like a game of Risk, featured miniature pewter aliens that mow down armored "space marines."
"It gets very ugly," said Jeff Perryman, a longtime game designer and lecturer in level design whose CV includes the game versions of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Students in his class redesigned the game, cutting off ambush points, and using tiny tiles to add catwalks and other architectural features that allow the marines to move quickly and shoot freely at their nimble attackers. A couple of prospective students stopped by Mr. Perryman's table, where he was delivering rapid-fire jokes and banter, as well as some tips for creating moods when transforming games into 3-D computer models. "If a monster is chasing you, you want to evoke angst and claustrophobia," he said. "You don't want bright, happy colors."
Mr. Perryman says students who learn these skills will be invaluable to gaming companies: "It's gotten so expensive to develop games that companies can't afford to take a risk with some kid off the street."
One industry expert who worked his way to the top of the game-design world without going to college says he's impressed with Guildhall so far.
"The program is designed and implemented by gamers for gamers and the vibe is just like a small start-up game company," says Paul Steed, a top game modeler, animator and creative director at Microsoft. "It's great to see a major research institution take the industry seriously."
Mr. Brown says he's optimistic that as more people learn about the degree, doors will open. Students on other campuses agree.
''We're coming out of the age where people used to get jobs as janitors and then move up to technical designer," says Eric Sutman, a freshman in computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who will join the institute's new game-design program when it starts next fall.
''If you don't know someone in the industry who can get you a job there, then you have to have some credentials," he adds.
When Jackie Gan first learned about Southern Methodist University's graduate-level video-game-design program, she was sitting stark naked in front of its inaugural class HEY! PICTURES, PLEASE!
After reading the first sentence, ... Photos. We need photos.
I have never gotten into the game consoles, my impression it is pretty much just mindless blasting away at things, while pc games seem to be more complex and strategic.
Our #2 son gets mail all the time from a place called Full Sail, another 'technology school' in Winter Park Florida, just North of Orlando.
How are we ever going to supply the worker ants if we're all to be "Queens?"
PC gaming is still more strategic, but with cheap memory on consoles they've been able to do a lot. At the same time, with cheaper, more powerful graphics cards on PCs, they've been able to do some of the things that the consoles used to do better.
When you get down to it, though, games are about fun, all the technical stuff in window dressing. Graphics, however, suck people in, and they buy the game, then stop playing it after 3 days because the game is no good. This is, of course, the dream of game designers, because then the user is out looking for another game.
Games I am playing:
- World of Warcraft (it's pretty good for an online game)
- Tiger Woods 2005
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (awesome)
- Chess (semi-annual binge)
- SSX 3
Classic arcade....
I personally prefer the comfort of my sofa and big screen tv for gaming than squinting at beautiful graphics on my monitor while hunched over and getting arm cramps trying to use my keyboard and uncomfortable ms joystick. But thats just me.
And besides I am all about gameplay and not graphics. Some of my favorite games are 5-7-8 years old and I still play them.
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