International Game Developers Association

Full name: Digital Game Industry Survey

Games Education
Course

Table of contents 1 Teachers 1.1 Instructors 1.2 Guest speakers 2 Course Background Information 2.1 Location 2.2 Classification 2.3 Student background needed 2.4 Course prerequisites 2.5 Time periods 3 Course Structure 3.1 Course description 3.2 Course learning objectives 3.3 Week by week topics 4 Course Materials & Facilities Used 4.1 Books 4.2 Other materials 4.3 Software (engines, tools) 4.4 Syllabus 4.5 Slides 4.6 Assessment materials 5 Analysis of learning methods 5.1 What worked 5.2 What didn't work

[edit] Teachers

[edit] Instructors

• Ian Schreiber

[edit] Guest speakers

• Alex Yeager, Mayfair Games (spoke to the class about the boardgame industry)

[edit] Course Background Information

[edit] Location

Ohio University

[edit] Classification

This is a survey course that covers the basics of the industry at a very high level, so I'm not sure exactly how to classify it. My best guess is...

Primary classification:

Business of Game Industry; Game History

Secondary classification:

Basics of game industry economics

[edit] Student background needed

None

[edit] Course prerequisites

None

[edit] Time periods

Taught over 10 weeks, two days per week, two hours per class. (Thus, 40 hours of class time total.)

[edit] Course Structure

[edit] Course description

An examination of the digital game industry. Topics include: history, economics and structure of the industry, roles and skillsets of practitioners, creative processes and business practices, testing, publishing and marketing.

[edit] Course learning objectives

1. Students will know at the end of this course whether they should consider a career in games, and if so in what capacity, and what their next steps will be during college.

2. Students will learn how to speak like game developers instead of speaking like students. (Originally I said students will "be able to carry on an intelligent conversation with a professional game developer", and more jaded educators wished me good luck with teaching students to have an intelligent conversation about anything :)

[edit] Week by week topics

Twenty lectures:

1. Course introduction, and a brief survey of games over the years.
2. Early game development (one-person teams) versus modern game development (very large teams). Introduction to the roles of Art and Programming.
3. Introduction to the roles of Game Design, Production, Sound and QA.
4. Business models, and comparison with other industries (comics, movies, books).
5. Related businesses: publishing, retail, first-party manufacturing, middleware, etc.
6. Players and player communities.
7. Marketing and game genres.
8. Development processes, and how they are affected by the target platform(s) and the type of game (original, license, sequel, port).
9. The boardgame industry and its ongoing relationship with video games.
10. Evolution of the video arcade.
11. History of the industry: from Pong to 2600 (i.e. up to the Crash of 83).
12. History of the industry: NES to PSX (i.e. 1985 - 1995).
13. The industry today, and current challenges in the industry (QoL, Hot Coffee, etc.)
14. Annual events: holiday season, E3, GDC... and everything else. This lecture was planned in June of this year, and I've since needed to rewrite it from scratch :P
15. Evolution of online multiplayer games.
16. Emerging fields: game journalism, serious games, casual games.
17. Past and present games that push boundaries.
18. Academia/industry relations, and Game Studies.
19. "Breaking In" to the industry.
20. Wild predictions on the future of the industry.

[edit] Course Materials & Facilities Used

[edit] Books

The book I wanted to use: High Score! The illustrated history of electronic games by Demaria & Wilson. Unfortunately it is currently out of print, so I had to make it optional. Interested students had no trouble finding it used on Amazon and the like.

Other than that, no required textbook.

[edit] Other materials

Online readings (of which there are many) are listed in syllabus

[edit] Software (engines, tools)

Students don't use much software for this class, other than a Web browser and word processor of their choice.

The one exception is the "programming" exercise, for which they use Game Maker: www.gamemaker.nl

[edit] Syllabus

http://igda.org/wiki/images/8/8e/Game_Industry_Survey_Syllabus.pdf

[edit] Slides

I didn't use Powerpoint very much. Classes were structured more like a GDC roundtable, with lots of discussion and frequent questions.

[edit] Assessment materials

http://igda.org/wiki/images/8/81/GameIndustrySurveyHomeworks.zip

This is the set of homeworks referenced in the syllabus. They are meant to give a small taste of most major development disciplines (I'm currently lacking an overly simplified Game Audio exercise).

Additionally, students are expected to give two short (3-5 minute) presentations to the class on a particular important Person, Company, Organization or Game. They are to give the basic cultural-literacy information that any game developer would know; for example, we don't need to know Shigeru Miyamoto's birthday or what his college major was, but we should at least know that he was responsible for the Mario and Zelda franchises. Students are graded on content, with a small bonus or penalty for presentation (i.e. if they kept the class interested or if their peers were nodding off).

[edit] Analysis of learning methods

[edit] What worked

Interactivity in classes. Students are much more engaged when there is a discussion going on, rather than when they are being lectured to. I try to not talk at them more than a couple minutes at a time without asking something. And besides, a class with the word GAME in the title should be interactive :)

Also, playing games in class was a favorite (obviously). I would always have a student volunteer to play so that I had my attention free to point things out to the rest of the class.

Showing "Making Of" videos from popular games (God of War, Guitar Hero, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Final Fantasy XII) was great, because it showed how game developers really talk about their craft. These also did a great job of reinforcing the material in the rest of the class.

[edit] What didn't work

I wanted to have students teach part of the class, so I assigned in-class presentations where students would present a topic (either a game, company or person) in-depth to the class. I chose the topics to be relevant to the classes they appeared in. I'm still unsure whether these have been a benefit to the class or not.