Any review of the current state of “game studies programs” in academia must begin with a determination of what is studied and what is taught.1 There is some inconsistency about what “game studies” means in the academy as well as in the game development industry. The conflation of subjects and pedagogies under a single rubric is reflected in the “IGDA Curriculum Framework: The Study of Games and Game Development” drafted by the Education Committee of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In developing a single, curricular framework that recognizes the multidisciplinary nature of “game studies” without imposing educational mandates, the committee uses the term “games-related education” to capture the variety of subjects and pedagogies composing the field. Under the term “games-related education,” the committee members posit a list of complimentary and interchangeable “Core Topics” that they feel intuitively addresses the unique practical and theoretical concerns of gaming. As a whole, the Core Topics provide a birds-eye view of the immense landscape of games-related education. (6)

The committee’s framework delimits games-related education into nine Core Topics that can be usefully reduced to three principal areas of study: 1) Critical/Cultural Study of Games, 2) Game Development, and 3) Game Production. My point here is not to regurgitate the work of the IGDA Educational Committee, but to emphasize the current fusing of disciplines with differing methodologies and research agendas under a single rubric. While this multidisciplinary approach has potential benefits for both the industry and the academy, it does not help produce a snapshot of the current state of “game studies programs.”

My goal for this article is to produce just such a snapshot, and I will examine and compare what I consider archetypal games-related education programs in the academy. Additionally, I will document programs not readily categorized, as well as nascent initiatives not yet classifiable as academic programs. The purpose of my inquiry is to create a baseline from which to analyze the field as it grows and as its disciplinary status becomes legitimated in the academy.

What is Game Studies?

An initial search of programs that refer to themselves as “game studies programs” indicates a variety of purposes and paths available to students. On the one hand, almost every graphic arts program teaches some component related to games, and increasingly, computer science programs find including game-related programming components an effective recruitment and teaching strategy. Additionally, numerous vocational colleges, such as Full Sail Real World Education, the University of Advancing Technology, and the Games Academy (located in Berlin), cater to the growing needs of game developers by providing students with the skills necessary for a career in the game development industry. On the other hand, there are programs that analyze games from a variety of humanistic standpoints. Programs that focus primarily on the in-depth analysis and critique of digital games (be it cultural, aesthetic, economic, political, historical, or psychological) are few but growing in number.

As it stands, all of these types of programs fall under the IGDA Education Committee’s term “games-related education.” Contained under this umbrella term is a conflation of theory and practice, which is not uncommon in emerging disciplines but needs to be brought to the fore. The conflation I refer to is that of the study and teaching of the technical aspects of game development (i.e., the craft or practice of game development, including programming, graphic design, level editing, story development, production, project management, and so on) in relation to that of the study and teaching of the humanistic critique, or theorization, of games as culturally-situated artifacts. As I have proposed elsewhere, thinking about computer games as culturally-situated artifacts—that is, artifacts situated within vast networks of production, marketing, distribution, and consumption, all of which shape the meaning of games in their own ways—essentially means thinking about them as “works,” or more precisely, as “gameworks.” Computer games “just make sense” as an integral part of industrialized cultures worldwide. The gamework calls attention to the mechanisms and implications of such common sense and the spectacle it teaches. The gamework, in short, takes computer games seriously by interrogating the social and cultural consequences of their significations (Ruggill, McAllister, and Menchaca 310).

Analogous (albeit reductively) is the difference between a creative writing program, which studies and teaches the craft of writing, and an English Literature program, which studies and teaches the product of the former as a cultural artifact. We might discipline the particulars of games-related education by naming programs whose primary activity is to study and teach the craft of developing computer games as “Game Design” programs, and by naming programs whose primary activity is to study and teach the theoretical analysis of games as cultural artifacts with the label “Game Studies” programs.2 The naming schema is necessarily arbitrary but is certainly in keeping with other academic disciplines such as Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies, and Women’s Studies—all of which focus on interrogating the formation of webs of significance as both determining and determined by social and cultural formations. Whether or not these labels will stick remains to be seen. However, they are useful in creating a snapshot of the current state of games-related education. Thus, from here on I will refer to craft programs as Game Design programs, to theory programs as Game Studies programs, and to “games-related education” as an umbrella category that incorporates both types of programs.

What is a Game Design Program?

Game Design programs make up the majority of games-related education. On its “Education: School Finder” page, Gamasutra.com lists over 300 schools that boast Game Design programs.3 These run the gamut from Research I Universities to community and vocational colleges, including at least one self-paced and email-based school. It is not surprising to find such a preponderance of Game Design programs; Gamasutra.com is a member of the CMP Game Group and has a vested interest in feeding game development industry.4 However, the fact that an equivalent list of Game Studies programs does not exist is telling.5 Likewise, not all of the Game Design programs listed on Gamasutra.com refer to themselves as “Game Design” programs. Many features of Game Design programs (game-related courses, faculty and student game-related research, access to equipment and computer labs, and so on) are integral to interdisciplinary programs that study the design of multiple digital and media arts (e.g., the Entertainment Technology Program, Carnegie Mellon; the Digital Worlds Institute, University of Florida; the Institute For Creative Technologies, University of Southern California; Information, Design & Technology Program, Georgia Tech University). However, the majority of these programs maintain a common curricular goal. That is, though the instructional means and the technical focus may change, these programs provide graduates with the skills necessary to enter some aspect of the game development industry.

These programs offer a wide variety of game-related instruction, including courses on:

• Artificial intelligence
• Programming languages
• Real-time 3D animation (character modeling and environments)
• Asset production
• Game documentation
• Texturing
• Lighting and rigging
• Production management
• New media
• Game engines
• Narrative structure of games
• Game audio and voice over
• Game and level design
• Platforms.

This list is by no means all-inclusive; rather, it is meant to suggest the range of topics taught and, more importantly, highlight what is missing from these programs—namely, the study of the gamework.

What is a Game Studies Program?

Northumbria University’s master’s degree in Computer Game Studies is the first program whose primary focus is the critical/cultural critique of the gamework, and the only program that meets the criteria of a “Game Studies” program as I have broadly defined it. Graeme Kirkpatrick notes that “although Masters level games scholarship has existed for a few years now, mostly in the Scandinavian universities, [Northumbria] is the first to offer structured taught courses organised around a canonical literature” (“Arrival”). More common than Northumbria’s Computer Game Studies program are programs that combine some study of the gamework with a Game Design program. The Master of Arts in Digital Games6 at the International Centre for Digital Content (ICDC), part of Liverpool John Moores University, and the Interdisciplinary Game Studies Minor7 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), are two examples of such hybrid programs. Rather than focusing on studying and teaching game theory and analysis from a cultural studies perspective, these programs focus on the design of games first and the critical/cultural critique of games second; the mission of these programs is to help produce better games. The comparison between the RPI Minor and the ICDC master’s reveals the range of possibilities that exists within games-related education. While the RPI Minor aims to follow the “industry model of game development,” the ICDC Masters clearly states its goal is “preparing graduates for immediate employment in the games industry.” The question that arises is how much emphasis on the gamework does a program need before it shifts from Game Design to Game Studies. The answer will be found in time as the disciplinary status of games-related education becomes fixed within the academy.

What is an EduGame Program?

Finally, there is a nascent third category of games-related education that is enjoying increased recognition by the academic community. This category— which I call “EduGame Programs”—consists of scholarly initiatives that study the pedagogical possibilities of computer games. The Games-to-Teach project (since transformed and expanded into The Education Arcade)8 and the Learning Games Initiative (commonly referred to as LGI)9 are two such initiatives, and they conduct a wide range of projects exploring games’ educational potential.

The Games-to-Teach project (a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Microsoft) began under the auspices of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. The project initially focused on development and testing of “educational media for math, science, and engineering education.” The Education Arcade expanded the project and broadened its areas of research to include the development of educational media for use in the Humanities.

LGI, by contrast, initially focused on the study of games for use in the Humanities. As LGI grew into a consortium of scholars, artists, and industry insiders, increasing numbers of campus and community members—some of whom had little or no gaming or game design experience—expressed great interest in using games as educational resources in their own classrooms and workplaces. LGI soon concentrated its focus on building and adapting games to a wide range of pedagogical situations throughout the academy and beyond. LGI works to make the reality of teaching with games available to teachers and trainers regardless of experience or discipline.

Whether or not EduGame Programs will become a fully developed third category of games-related education within academia, or will be categorized under the rubric of “Game Design” or “Game Studies” programs, remains to be seen. Perhaps, EduGame initiatives will maintain a special status, straddling the line between industry and academia, one wireless controller (so to speak) in each camp.

No doubt there are other kinds of game study initiatives in the offing. As these initiatives develop, they in turn will modify the discourse of game scholars and reshape the analytical spaces and terms that constitute valid lines of inquiry within the fields of Game Studies and Game Design.

Notes:

1. I make the distinction here between “game studies programs” (a general term for academic programs that focus on the study and design of computer games in their various formats) and Game Theory programs (academic programs that focus on the constitutive elements of games in general and their applied uses in fields as disparate as economics and engineering).
2. Michel Foucault refers to the act of disciplining as “a procedure…aimed at knowing, mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space” (143). In this sense, naming a disciplinary field sets it apart from other analytical spaces and delimits the terms that constitute what is to be considered a valid line of inquiry.
3. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/companies.php3?cat=153138
4. CMP Game Group is composed of Gamasutra.com, Game Developer magazine, and the Game Developer Conference.
5. If a list of Game Studies programs as I have defined them does exist, I would be grateful if the reader would bring it to my attention.
6. http://www.icdc.org.uk/magames/
7. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/hss/
8. The archived Games-to-Teach web site can be found at http://www.educationarcade. org/gtt/. The current Education Arcade web site can be found at http://www.educationarcade.org/.
9. http://www.mesmernet.org/lgi/.

Works Cited:

Educational Committee of the International Game Developers Association. “IGDA Curriculum Framework: The Study of Games and Game Development” 25 Feb. 2003. IGDA: International Game Developers Association. Version 2.3 beta. Mar. 2003. 1-26. 15 Jan 2005 <http://www.igda.org/academia/IGDA_ Curriculum_Framework_Feb03.pdf>.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Kirkpatrick, Graeme. “The Arrival of Computer Game Studies.” The Ivory Tower. Sep. 2003 IGDA: International Game Developers Association. 9 Jan. 2005 <http://www.igda.org/columns/ivorytower/ivory_Sep03.php>.
Ruggill, Judd Ethan, Ken S. McAllister, and David Menchaca. “The Gamework.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 1.4 (2004): 297-312. “The Minor in Game Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.” Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 15 Jan. 2005 <http:// www.rpi.edu/dept/hss/igsm/IGame/gamestudies.htm>.
“Welcome to the MA Digital Games Website.” 2002. The International Center for Digital Content. 17 Jan. 2005 < http://www.icdc.org.uk/magames/>.