GAMES:EDU

Matt Southern ran out of time last year, but was giving an absolutely excellent talk, so we got him to return for a two hour session this year. He covered a lot of important ground, and also got Pete Smith from SCEE in to give a demo of Little Big Planet. Here are some of the points Matt raised:

A lot of developers say "most games courses suck". This might be true, but so do most games. On the rare occasions that this is pointed out, it's usually with the euphemism "games are a hit driven industry". Perhaps, at this point, it would be fair for academics to say games courses are hit driven...

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Games have undergone an illusion of progress, because while the technology has advanced year on year, our cultural progress lags behind. In terms of the ladder of cultural forms, games are still at the bottom.

Giles Whitell wrote recently in The Times: "I hate being told to immerse myself in them before passing judgment, because it feels like being told to immerse myself in smack and teenage pregnancy before passing judgment on them". Matt's comment on this was "the higher you get up the cultural ladder, the less often you're compared to smack".

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He also had things to say on game designer input into courses: Ask a game designer what a game is, and they'll say "Games are interactive entertainment". Ask them to be more specific, and they'll just tell you their preferences. They'll probably say little about craft. Stroking a cat is "interactive entertainment", but it's not Peggle. Games are something different.

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At Games:EDU 07, a lot of developers were telling lecturers that they need more maths and CS in their courses. Games need cultural growth, because if lecturers listen only to us, the industry will just end up with weird, inbred versions of existing developers.

Acknowledging that vocational skills are an important part of games education, Matt also said that games desperately need the infusion of cultural intelligence and maturity.

To illustrate, he referenced the "movie brats" of the 1970s. They were the first graduates from American films schools, who took cinema forward through some radical cultural jumps. Games courses are at the point of spawning such a generation, but won't be able to do it by only teaching vocational skills.

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The balance of vocational skills and cultural awareness seemed to set the tone of Games:EDU this year, where in previous years it has been more polarised. We're looking forward to carrying this on at Games:EDU South in July.