Educational Survey

#1 Where I teach
1) no not really, it is a Graphic Design degree so they learn useful things like Photoshop and 3dstudio max
2) Design is our main focus let it be for print work, websites, or 3d modeling/animation
3) The school is Spencerian College, which is part of the Sullivan University system. Sullivan is a technical/vocation school with degrees ranging from culinary, para legal, medical assistance, CAD, electrical engineering, and computer graphics
4) Associate Degree
5) I tried teaching scripting as a web class, but the students are artist (I am using it loosely) and most artist have abandoned any desire for math, thus programming was a lost cause, that class has since been discontinued
6) I find most prestigious school are looking at Game for their simulation interaction aspects and not so much for entertainment purposes, See Carnegie's master in Interactive Media
7) Being a Game Designer is rarely addressed, in fact I went to a seminar at the 05 GDC based on education for game development. The head of Digi Pen Claude Comair said they do not teach how to be a designer, that it would be impossible to teach but rather you are a good game designer or you are not, I don't nessisarily agree.
8) Yes it is, but more and more are arising , check out The Video Game Theory Reader I am currently reading it. It is a very good collection of viedo game theory articles that explain where the industry came from and where it needs to go.
9) Great question, the read explains that currently most articles are found as subsets in other academic fields, but now that video games have been included as a subset of pretty much 'all' fields math, physics, computer science, art, English . . . that this should be a good enough reason to establish it's own academic category

Where I am going to be attending in the winter
1) Yes, Savannah School of Art and Design degree in Interactive and Game Development
2) It looks like a main focus in Art with a touch of scripting curriculum
3) Yes, Savannah is the best art school in the South, and arguably the best on the East coast.
4) There is a Baccalaureate but I will be pursuing my Masters there.
5) Most is Art, so character development, level design, the scripting seems like it would be GUI related mostly, with a possibility of scripting for web databases.
6) See previous answer
7) See previous answer
8) See previous answer
9) See previous answer

I will be most interested in you results, I might be here doing the same in a month or so =)
Best of luck

#2 1) Are you part of an institution that promotes courses for videogames ?

Yes, I'm course leader for Computer Games Design and senior lecturer on Computer Games Software Development

2) What is the main focus of your course ( art, programming, etc. ) ?

Programming and Design

3) Is it connected with a university or research center ?

The University of Bolton, Bolton, England.

4) What is the level of your course(s) (Extension, Ba, Msc, Phd, other ) ?

Both BSc level courses

5) If it is focused with programming, what specific area ( AI, CG, network, interfaces... ) ?

Game Software Development is a general game programming specific degree. So all of the above.

6) What do you percieve as the main focus other institutions have ( globally ) ?

I would say that there are a few key universities in europe and the US that have some realistic programmes and areas of research. But there are also plenty of "me too" programmes with "games" in the name of the course to literally recruit and those courses have nothing to do with games. I think the best of the courses are like ours, practically based development courses.

7) What focus do you think no attention ( or less ) is thrown at ?

I would say that the whole area of game engine architecture is something that is vastly under-researched. The fact that we have this real-time very constrained system with many different areas of skill means that game engine design and architecture really should be studied, especially now we are looking forward to multiple processor machines.


8) Do you think it's hard to find academic papers on the subject ?

Not on specific parts of games, such as AI, or Networking, but on the general idea of game architecture, game designs and practical things with academic slants.

9) How would you sort the available literature on videogames ?


Generally, either we are looking at high quality academic literature in a very narrow focus, or broad spectrum usually variable quality information which is highly subjective and usually not well researched.

However there is some good quality "practical" material, such as the charles river media gems style books.