GDC07: Game Studies

Kurt Squire , UW-Madison, discussed video game studies as an increasingly accepted field of study. For working groups, he posed questions such as: What are the best practices for studying games? What effective pedagogical models are emerging? How do teachers balance the needs for understanding the technical aspects of the medium with the demands of scholarship?

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Beth A. Dillon

GDC07: Curriculum Framework 2

In working lunch II, participants discussed various ways to design a program using the current curriculum framework, focused on typical university constraints within disciplines.

Each group discussed:
Discipline structure: how to offer courses within disciplines and across disciplines
Bridging the gap between disciplines
Problems for one discipline to talk to another, resistance from different sides
Should game programs be in different disciplines or form their own interdisciplinary unit, if so how?
How do you see the courses in the framework distributed across disciplines or within what form of interdisciplinary structure do you see them fit best?

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Beth A. Dillon

GDC07: Teaching Methods

Tracy Fullerton introduced the topic of teaching methods (powerpoint) for a working session challenged to "develop brand new curriculum for an emerging field of study in a learning environment which is already overtaxed and arguably ineffective" and "blaze through some interesting out-of-the box thinking."

Reports from each working group are included as Comments and Powerpoint:

Community building
Collaborative projects
Managing the scope of student game projects
Building interdisciplinary student teams
Assigning games as “texts” for game studies courses
Issues in building & maintaining game libraries
Models for inter-institutional collaboration
Balancing theory and practice
Competitions and festivals as learning objectives

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Beth A. Dillon

GDC07: Design Workshop

Nick Fortugno from gameLab held a workshop (powerpoint) to bring fundamental game design into the context of designing educational games. Somewhere at the heart of design, Fortugno asserts, are people considering the system: the players and how players interact with variables. “Games are systems,” commented Fortugno, “built out of rules. Out of that comes play.”

Fortugno points out that players introduce themselves to a set of rules they negotiate with. Games have a relationship with aspects such as competition, goals, accomplishment, cooperation, collaboration, and mapping between pleasure and frustration.

In a learning game, Fortugno argues, the player response to content is focused on learning as opposed to emotional feedback. However, when designing educational games, key questions need to be faced: How does that response work? What’s the potential for it? What do we do to achieve it?

In his own classes, Fortugno often has his students play the 20 questions game. During the workshop, groups kicked off the interactive hands-on portion of the session by playing Dungeon Attack, a non-digital prototype, where much laughter was had!

Who killed the card monsters?

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Beth A. Dillon

GDC07: Curriculum Framework Roundtables

In working lunch I, guided by Magy Seif El-Nasr, participants were divided into groups led by SIG representatives to discuss and revise the current framework. The goal is to recommend revisions to the 2003 Curriculum Framework looking for problems: holes, insufficient detail, ambiguity and repetition.

Reports from each group are included as Comments:

Critical Game Studies, led by Tim Langdell
Game Production: Programming, led by Tom Carbone
Game Production: Design, led by Tim Roden
Game Production: Visual/Audio Design, led by Joseph Arnayosi
Game Production: Management/Development Process, led by Christopher Erhardt
Business of Gaming, led by Kevin O'Gorman
Game Production: Writing and Interactive Storytelling, led by Ron Weaver
Game Production: Technical Art, led by Laurie Torelli

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Beth A. Dillon

GDC Excitement

Well it seems that I am not a really ardent blogger, but I am trying. I am getting so excited about the upcoming SIG’s Curriculum Workshop at GDC as well as the rest of the conference. There is so much that is going to be going on that week, I hope my head does not spin off. The actualization of our community, everyone working together towards common goals at the workshop is going to be very inspiring. Also, meeting people that I have only corresponded with, or getting introduced to people that I’ve read about… is also really exciting for me.

I think the one thing that I want to make sure happens is that everyone knows that the SIG’s goals are really simple… providing resources to educators, be it in the form of curriculum guidance, discussion forums, book opportunities or professional development. Essentially, I want the SIG to be the one stop shop for Educators and their needs.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at the conference… until next week…


Susan
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Prof. Susan Gold
Chair, IGDA Education SIG