Who is doing the hard work, and who is swooping in at the last minute to enjoy the ill-gotten fruit of another's labor? Here's a little snippet from University of Wales, Newport's description of the Computer Games Design - BA (Honors) degree:
When you graduate from the course you are fully prepared as a creative practitioner who can really make a difference. Roles range from the traditional art positions of character and environment design concept to model, rigging and animation to level design and project management for computer games design.
Frankly, that looks very much like the university is suggesting that students will come out of the program ready for a career; one where the student can make a difference, develop games independently, etc. Academia is trying to sell students on degrees for the marketable, useful skills imparted over the course of earning the degree, and then refusing to be accountable to either the industries targeted, or the graduated student who discovers too late that they are not actually prepared for a job.
The other funny thing about this rant is the disconnect between the criticisms he perceives as being leveled at games education ("By turns it’s either too many or too few games, not enough programming, etc") and his defense (arguing that academia is not about "fitting the loyalty chips in the necks of serfs bound for indentured servitude at the nearest Triple-A studio")1. Are the only people criticizing game development curricula at those AAA studios? Is that really their main interest in game development programs? Or is there actually a disconnect between the education offered in these programs, the promises they make, and the students coming out?
The group of people in this scenario that seem to have no accountability - that try to avoid taking responsibility for their actions - are the universities. The students certainly pay their way, the game developers are left still struggling to find, develop, or explain how someone embarks on this career path and develops along it... but the universities, well, they've got tuition and they've got another batch of students and if anyone says "you treated that last batch of students wrong" - the response is
We aren’t training sweatshops. We don’t teach skills, we teach people. Now bog off and let us do our job!
1. I'm being a bit loose with the quote; however, I think I'm accurately portraying his stance in the article, and it's really the best imagery in the article.
/soapbox on
/tangent on
I see this with the wide-eyed graduates we interview, who are ready to COME IN AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE and are ready to be creative director next week because they HAVE A DEGREE! It's adorable, and interesting to see to what level their soul dies a little when they come in and start doing associate level work. IMO, a degree should afford you an opportunity at an entry level job upon which it was based if you can get your head out of your hiney and interview like a respectable, likeable, responsible human being. Why not more? Because a degree is not proof that you are anything but good at getting a degree in the subject you're in. Which is better than NOT being good at getting a degree, but shouldn't give you a red carpet to your workstation at a gaming company...
Everyone has fantastic ideas (ok, not EVERYONE, but in general, ideas are a dime a dozen). A smaller subset can take that idea and make a coherent plan of action with it. A smaller subset yet can actually follow through and see that idea to the end. A smaller subset yet have the patience and wherewithal to navigate the politics to have these ideas see the light of day.
And I'm sorry, but these are things that you might get a taste of in school, but until you're playing with real money, it doesn't work the same.
If you would have asked me 5 years ago, I would have said that as long as you had talent, you should rise up through the ranks quickly. I got that opportunity. However, I now realize how STUPID that was and how much better a game can do with proper management and direction, not some wide-eyed kid going OH OH OH wouldn't it be cool IF.
/soapbox off
/tangent off
1a. This has been true long before there have ever been video games.
1b. Only vocational and community college institutions can be expected to have an immediate interest in workforce development. All other higher-ed is about academics. publication and tenure first, and don't kid yourself otherwise about that.
2. Far more people are fascinated by the idea of making video games than there are people who know the first thing about how they're made. Most don't even seem to know what the divisions of labor are.
3. The more uninformed you are about something the more likely you are to think it's a simple matter. (As Scott Adams put it in the Dilbert Principle.)
Creative people need checks and balances, and they absolutely need technicians to make what they want to do, real. If anything, their creativity (by Meyers-Briggs, iNtuitive types rather than Sensing types) should be applied to the systems by which all involved with the process can feel fulfilled.
The fact that this doesn't always happen is certainly worth griping about, but it doesn't mean that creative people aren't needed, or that creative people are always lazy and shiftless do-nothings who couldn't find their asses with both hands.
You don't have to go all the way back to Aesop to find a parable about the lazy and shiftless relying wholly on the hard workers for their livelihood and getting away with it. Go watch FRAGGLE ROCK as an adult and tell me what that show was really about, in particular the dynamic between the Doozers (who make Doozer Sticks and build stuff endlessly with them) and the Fraggles (who only hang around and dream up wacky nonproductive stuff to do all day long and TEAR UP DOOZER BUILDINGS SO THEY CAN EAT THE DOOZER STICKS.)
It was another generation before anyone made Bob the Builder into a kid's show, but all he seems to do is direct all the sentient machines around to do the building for him.
I'd wager that no one except those who have had their egos utterly deflated into insubstantiality set out to be ants. Grasshoppers always sound like better things to be. Until you come to know better.
Schools teach both kinds of classes.
The first kind of class is suitable as a core class in a degree program. The second may or/may not, be appropriate as an elective in a degree program. It is certainly appropriate as a service course for businesses and professionals in the area served by the school.
People, both inside and outside of academia and business need to understand that.
BTW, remember that you are reacting to someone from the BRITISH academic system. The dumb ass Brits are still a CLASS based society of the worst sort.
Liberal Arts League