When I tell people I teach a course in computer game development, they usually ask me two questions: what programming language do I use, and can I get them into the industry? These questions illustrate the two misconceptions about games and gaming: that the design of a good computer game is more dependent on code and graphics than on actual content, and that the creation of computer games is as glamorous and entertaining as playing the games themselves. Like music, film, writing, or any other creative and popular endeavor, the world at large seems to think that game development about having fun, a misconception fueled partially by the flashy, rock star nature of the industry itself. However, commercial game development, like any other business, is more concerned with selling a product than with stretching the medium or taking creative risks. For the most part, commercial game development is not glamorous, nor groundbreaking, and it certainly is not going to change the way we think about games in an academic sense.

The course I teach is called Computer Game Development, and is part of the new Arts and Technology program and the Institute for Interactive Arts and Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Game design and development is one of the biggest draws for our students, especially now that computer games are a part of mainstream popular culture. There are video game award shows hosted by rappers and movie stars (http://www.spiketv.com/events/vga2004/), a cable TV channel dedicated completely to the coverage of games (http://www.g4tv.com), and a Cyber Athlete Professional League bent on turning the first-person shooter into a professional sport (http://www.thecpl.com/league). However, the computer game as an art form does not seem to be progressing as rapidly, partially because there are few places for artists and innovators to safely experiment with the medium. At the moment, academia seems to be no exception. My course in particular has been taught by a number of different instructors, many of them actual game developers, and most of the time the course has focused on preparing students to enter the game industry it teaches them to use the proper programming tools, animation software, and business strategies. Other schools are treating a degree in game studies as a technical certificate, and boast only of their placement programs in game design studios in the area.

My feeling is that this is not enough. I believe that the purpose of an academic course in computer game design is to investigate games as potential and mostly untapped artistic media, and to allow students the opportunity to test the limits of those media. Games have grown up from their eight-bit roots into an adolescence that includes ultra-violence and gore, scantily-clad women, and occasionally a moral choice or two. Now they need to grow up again into truly adult experiences, including meaningful interactivity and choices, graphics that are aesthetically as well as technologically excellent, morally ambiguous situations; and eventually compelling, worthwhile experiences with as much depth and meaning as works of art in other media. In the fast-paced, highly competitive commercial industry, however, there is little room for experimentation, creative risk, or growing pains along these lines. For the computer game is to be taken seriously as a medium for expression, the transformation must start in the academy, where students have the time and intellectual freedom to take risks of innovation with gameplay and content. For this to occur, academic courses in game development should focus more on the design and meaning of games, and less on the specific technical skills required by the current industry. The course I teach is centered on three areas of study: theory, practice, and individual design, and might serve as a model academic courses in game studies that analyze what games are now, and what they might become in the future.

The first thing students in my course are surprised to learn is that there is as computer game theory, and that they will have to read. From Huizinga to the most recent offerings in the ongoing argument, about the effects of violent games on children, the students are exposed to a wide range of writing. We look at classic science fiction stories, interactive narrative theory, articles on character and level design, soundscapes and sound effects, artificial intelligence, and internet fan sites about common game clichés, including “The One Hundred Things Iʼll Never Do If I Become an Evil Overlord” (http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html) and “The Grand List of Console RPG Clichés” (http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.htnl). I use Rouseʼs Game Design: Theory and Practice as a foundational text to cover most of the basics of computer game design, the insightful interviews with working game designers and the suggested structure for writing design documentation.

By the second half of the semester, the course moves past the “hows” of design and our discussion gets well into the “whys,” covering as many issues as deeply as possible: implied morality and violence, game addiction, socialization and politics in persistent world design, games that cover current events, educational gaming, serious gaming, crossovers between games and other media, and the structure of the game industry itself. Firsthand analysis of current breakthrough titles as well as seriously flawed releases is just as important for analysis, and although many of my students are familiar with a particular type of game, few have ventured outside their chosen genre. By the end of the course, students have a wider understanding of theory and the structure of all types of games, and the problems and issues inherent in each.

Once students are familiar with game theory and analysis, they need to put their ideas into practice as literally as possible. When I took the course myself a few years ago, it was taught by Tom Hall, who with John Carmack and John Romero created the breakthrough game Doom (1993). At the end of that course, those of us who were interested met one weekend and attempted to build a working prototype of an original computer game in forty-eight hours, using a 2D tile-set and engine from the Monkeystone title Hyperspace Delivery Boy! (2002). In terms of educational value, those forty-eight hours were more instructive than every lecture that came beforehand. Unfortunately, very few people in the class chose to take part in the exercise, and it came so late in the semester that there was no time for a postmortem or evaluation of the experience.

In my course, I have expanded the design weekend to more closely match the studentsʼ progress over the course of the semester. This past fall, my class of thirty students modified the Unreal Tournament 2004 engine to create a top-down shooter called Pyramid Scheme, which included original, student-designed levels, weapons, and enemies. This semester, the class will be modifying the Halflife 2 (2004) engine to create a prototype game over three separate design weekends, working from a scenario that was randomly generated by the class as a whole. This prototype will be presented at the departmentʼs Spring Arts Festival. I have also dedicated class time to game development, as many students are unable to participate in extracurricular weekends and would otherwise miss out on this hands-on experience.

One of the most important lessons learned in the development weekends is the limitation of speed. Designing even a prototype computer game in forty-eight hours is no easy task, and when time is of the essence it is very tempting to stick with familiar, even cliché approaches to design, particularly level and character design. It is difficult enough to create a seamless, challenging, and above all entertaining experience for someone else; creating a substantially original and unique experience can feel impossible. While these weekends might seem discouraging, I believe that each of my students is capable of creating and fleshing out an original, interesting, even groundbreaking game if given the chance. To that end, each student finishes the course by completing a design document for a new computer game of his or her own invention. This document contains all the specifications for actual game development, everything from interface menus and item lists to the level progression and flow (although for our purposes, the length and size is shortened, as actual design documents can be hundreds of pages long). In principle, this document should merge the ideal, “holy grail” game, culled from theory and analysis, with the practical development process, experienced in the design weekends. For me, this document is the true focus of the course, as it crystallizes all the ideas, theories, problems, and desires each student has about current games while encouraging them to stretch the game medium as much as possible. Students are given the chance to design without the physical limitations of cost, experience, and limited creative control, allowing them to take artistic leaps of faith that commercial game development companies are unwilling to risk.

Sometimes, however, the opportunity to think creatively is not enough. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it can be extremely counterproductive in a game development course. Many students are tempted to write a “new game plus,” simply delineating the structure of their favorite game and adding one or two superficial changes. To encourage more innovative design, I assign the document with specific limitations meant to undermine studentsʼ dependence on rehashed, worn-out game ideas. In the fall, students were required to design games that depended on a technology that did not exist, encouraging them to invent unique and interesting new ways for players to interact with digital game systems. Holographic projections, motion-detecting body suits, true artificial intelligence, dream-affected games, and fully-interactive mobile technology were a few of the new technologies my students included, changing the ways even the simplest games were played. This semester, the students are allowed current commercial software, but have been denied clichés; their design must follow a set of rules encouraging new gameplay developments, and discouraging such overused devices as coincidental portals to Hell, Tolkien-based races and classes, elemental magic systems, and anything even remotely related to saving the world. As an assignment, the design document is meant to be more than the culmination of a course. Some of my students are already a part of the game industry, and more will find their way there, as beta testers, programmers, artists, or even designers. Regardless of how close or far they are from the bottom of the heap, they will have the seeds of at least one innovative game in them, which will help them not only to succeed in the industry, but possibly to begin changing it.

Janet Murrayʼs Hamlet on the Holodeck maintains that computer games, like most forms of digital media, are in an incunabular state, products of a technology that is still well within its infancy (28). However, the medium will not stay in its infancy for long. Technologically, games are maturing so fast that simply training students to enter the current industry does them a disservice; every six months, it seems, graphics are more detailed, physics engines are more realistic, and players are able to affect more and more of the game world. Gameplay, on the other hand, has mostly remained the same. Players are still casting spells, killing monsters, and exploring worlds that are high in entertainment value but low in meaning and worthwhile content. Meanwhile, the amount of published research on game studies from both industry developers and academics continues to grow—and while little of it is reflected in the current commercial industry at large, an academic course in game design should take advantage of as much of this research as possible. As the next generation of game designers, creative directors, and studio heads, students need to see that there is more to game design than fast cars and flashy deaths, and more to game studies than learning how to pander to a particular demographic. Perhaps the commercial game industry is not ready for adult or serious games, games for the thinking person, but academia most certainly is. I believe the course that I teach, while certainly not the only structural model, can serve as an example for other programs in game studies to introduce the idea of serious, artistic games to students. A single course cannot change the system, but it might change a few students, who hopefully years from now will understand that it takes more than programming to build a worthwhile game, and that breaking into the game industry is not nearly as much fun as changing it.

Works Cited:

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.
Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
Rouse, Richard. Game Design: Theory and Practice. 2nd Ed. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing, 2004.