GameCareerGuide Feature: Teaching Game Design

Author: by Staff

In GameCareerGuide's lastest in-depth feature, Teaching Game Design, graduate student Michael S. Prinke explores the challenges and complications in teaching college-level courses on video games. Prinke, a recent graduate of Michigan State University's game design specialization who will soon enter Savannah College of Art and Design as a Masters of Fine Arts student in Interactive Design and Game Development, suggests that there are more complications than are generally expected with university game education. Says Prinke, "The nebulousness of game industry practices coupled with the diversity of skill sets that it needs to function presents a difficult challenge for educators in that no single curriculum can prepare students for every position or every company. Instructors have to find ways to match students' abilities and interests to what exists and help them at a more personal level than one might normally see in a college course." However, it's not just a matter of industry idiosyncracy. "The four great challenges of educating game design, then, are as follows: first, instructors are challenged to prepare students of a bewildering variety of backgrounds and interests for an industry with no production standards and wild variance in job descriptions, expectations, and design philosophies. Second, instructors are challenged to work around students' expectations and present a curriculum that satisfies them. Third, they must do this within budgetary constraints. Fourth and finally, they must instruct students in a field that, like the rest of the entertainment industry, may or may not be taken seriously by either other educators or the public alike." Interested? Read the full feature, Teaching Game Design: Problems in Educating the Next Generation, published today on Gamasutra's education-focused sister site GameCareerGuide.com.