Boston

One of my biggest passions is trying to bring people together in our community. I think by deepening and broadening a collaborative community within local, national and global educators is fundamental to the success of our growing genre. Not only is it nice to know that we are not alone in our academic goals, but in most issues that arise we go through the same ups and downs… be it funding, being taken seriously or just general challenges. It is the reason why I turned to the IGDA when I started teaching in games in 2001.

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in the city of Boston Mayor’s office one-day conference to develop strategies that support the growth of Boston’s Game Industry. Since I was on my way to Boston I thought I would try to meet with local educators working in games, so I did a little investigating. Mind you, Boston is thick with colleges and universities, but I managed to find close to 90 educators working in some aspect of games. They have enough people to start their own special interest group. I called the meeting to see if they were interested in developing some sort of consortium, or sandbox to work within. A place where they could possibly create an environment for low-risk experimentation or just work collaboratively. After pulling together this list, I emailed everyone and invited them to a meeting. Although the invite went out with short notice, I got 30 people to the table. I was so exciting to see the growing interest in game education. What amazed me was that most everyone in the room did not know each other… yet. I was so pleased to find out that so many of those around the table were here just so that they could meet one another.

Keeping that in mind, I very much want to ask all those willing to call, email their neighboring institutions. Start to build a few bridges to your neighbor schools. We are not inventing the cure for cancer here, games are only made as a product of collaboration. I would like to see our community build friendship and alliances before the summer break comes. I know this is a lot to ask for the end of the semester, but is there anything you can do to build upon what you have in your college? Could a collaboration expand and help one another? Art schools, contact the technical schools and vice versa.

As Dr. Alice Robison of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program said of this past Friday's meeting, “The fact that all of us were committed enough to gather for this meeting is a testament to our willingness to collaborate.” I think each of us sees the potential benefits in creating these bridges. So please, be like one professor at one institution said to another educator, I have always been interested in talking to someone from your school; “I should walk across the street.”


Susan Gold
IGDA Education SIG Chairperson