Consumers
Consumers may be the source of our industry’s success, but they are also the source of a decent amount of frustration and bewilderment too. The fact is that consumers are an unpredictable bunch; meaning that good games don’t always make money and bad games can sell by the lorry load. Most children don’t end up working in game development, but they do end up being part of a future generation of game consumers. Giving them a basic understanding of game development would allow them to make more informed choices and ultimately create a more discerning audience. This can only be good for innovation and creativity in the development industry, and may even help publishers by creating a more predictable audience that is seeking a quality gameplay experience. Of course there’s no point trying to change consumers, if the people responsible for commissioning and selling the games can’t respond to the change…
Publishers, Marketing Departments and Journalists
It may be more controversial, but I think there is also a strong argument for members of the wider games industry being more literate in game development. It’s important to stress that I’m not trying to say that these groups don’t understand games, but just that they could gain a deeper understanding of games from going through the process of making their own. To be fair, many people in these areas already have development experience, but in an ever-expanding industry a marketing executive is as likely to have made their career selling cheese as computer games. If your marketing department don’t understand what gameplay is then how can they be expected to sell it? All these groups deal with games professionally, so surely an understanding of them is as important to their jobs as knowing how to use MS Project, Excel or Word. So why not have your next staff training day on game development? If teenagers can do it then so can you…
Women
According to the ESA, some 38% of game players are female, but we all know that the proportion of women working in game development is far less than that. In our experience, girls up to about the age of eleven are just as interested in making games as boys, and we get a very even split at the clubs. Unfortunately, by the time they reach their teens the proportion of girls prepared to attend game-making workshops drops off completely. It appears that by this age it is labelled as a boys activity and only the most independently minded girls are willing to go against the flow. Bringing game development into schools would give more girls a chance to try it out, without feeling they were doing something wrong. They would then quickly find that they are just as good as the boys – if not better – because girls usually listen to instructions! In fact, there are already initiatives like CC4G (Computer Clubs for Girls) in the UK that are attempting to introduce game development to girls. Nonetheless its clear that more needs to be done if the games industry wants to make the most of the balance of potential talent that is out there for the future.
Society
The controversy over violent videogames is likely to remain a thorn in the industry’s side for the foreseeable future, but everyone involved in the argument would benefit from a deeper understanding of games. Parents could certainly have a better understanding and awareness of game ratings, and legislators would benefit from a better understanding of what they are arguing about. Making computer games with your child is a great way to interact with them, and the perfect context to discuss issues such as violence and age ratings in a natural way. Making a game with appropriate content for their classmates makes a good pretext for exploring this issue, and you may both learn something from the experience. PEGI in Europe and the ESRB in the US offer information on game ratings.
Producers and Game Designers
While there are some producers and designers who began their careers as programmers, many will never actually have made a game by themselves before. Nonetheless their jobs put them at the heart of the synthesis and evaluation feedback loop, so it would be unfair to suggest that they couldn’t gain similar insights as their programming colleagues. However, a good game programmer is constantly tweaking and refining a game and even the most rigorous game design has some gaps that need to be filled. Consequently I believe that many producers and game designers would still benefit from developing a complete mini-game of their own. In particular I believe it would help to reinforce their understanding of the mechanics of creating good gameplay, and maybe even provide a new platform for prototyping their game ideas without having to rely on a programmer. Ultimately this can only be good for game development and could even result in better games.
Academics
Games have finally become an area of serious academic study, with computer scientists, sociologists, educationalists, and psychologists all getting in on the act. However, there will always be a certain animosity between theorists and practitioners in any field, for obvious reasons. Many academics do create their own games as part of their research, but there are plenty that do not – and getting research students to do it for you doesn’t count! The only way to earn your development wings is to go through the holistic experience of designing and making your own game from scratch. It doesn’t matter if the final product looks like something from the 80’s; if you can make a game that someone else enjoys playing then you’ve made the grade. With tools like Game Maker around there are no excuses for anyone publishing work about computer games not to have been through the experience of designing and making their own game!
“By actually making the game and thinking about game concepts like difficulty, I learnt just how many variables there are in even a small game which can be varied to change the gaming experience. Although I have played a lot of games and experienced flow, I had never really considered what the state was composed of or how different variables in game could differentially give rise to it.”
Chris Dowsett, MSc Student at the LSRI
Conclusion
Games are affecting the lives and livelihoods of more and more people, and they are no longer the preserve of a geeky minority. However, if you want to truly understand the medium then you need to have a go at making one for yourself. It doesn’t require a computer science degree and you won’t have to read a book the size of a telephone directory. So stop what you’re doing, and try making a game for yourself.
Just don’t expect any respect from students!
References:
Bloom, B. (editor). 1956.Taxonomy of educational objectives: Book 1, Cognitive domain. New York: Longman
Gagne, R. (1985). The Conditions of Learning (4th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston
Habgood, J., Overmars, M (2006). The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners, Berkeley (CA): APress
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Introduction
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