Cape Town Community Evening - Game Industry Education Discussion
Hi everyone,
This coming Wednesday (24th June) I'd like to start a discussion around education and the games industry.
A little background may be helpful to understand what prompted this.
I've been in contact with an organization which aims to teach high school girls from less privileged backgrounds to code. The girls enter the program through a week long boot camp, which in my opinion perhaps a little unfortunately, focuses largely on HTML and a little JavaScript. I'm hoping to put together a similar boot camp at the end of the year or early next year which follows on from the original camp and focuses on interactive media/game design. A week is not a very long time, so I would like to put together a program which is engaging whilst equipping them to learn more about the topic.
More generally, being a student, I'm also interested in what the local industry has to say about game design/development education.
I have invited A/ Prof. James Gain, as a lecturer in the games course at UCT, I feel that he will help to provide another perspective on the matter. Hopefully he is able to make it.
Anyway, I'm posting a series of questions here prior to the discussion in the hope that it will encourage more thoughtful commentary on the matter. If anyone would like to prepare something, please let me know, then we could make it more like a panel discussion. As I don't want to monopolize the evening, I think we'll have to time-box the discussion a little.
So here goes:
1. What are the first things an aspiring game developer/designer should learn?
2. What are the most important skills a student needs to learn in order to be an effective designer/developer?
3. Extrapolating from the current trajectory the games industry is taking in South Africa, how do you believe the skills mix will change, and how does will this compare to the industry internationally? In other words, will there be an increased demand for graphics programmers for example.
4. Do you believe that the local game industry is being adequately served by tertiary institutions in South African, and keeping in mind that tertiary institutions wish to produce internationally employable graduates, in what way could tertiary institutions bolster their offerings?
5. As demonstrated by the recent industry survey, there is a notable lack of diversity in both race and gender in the games industry in South Africa. This is likely in part due to both privilege and culture. I've long felt that game design could be a fantastic medium for stealthily reinforcing high school mathematics and physics, not to mention programming.
Taking this into account, if you were faced with the slightly terrifying prospect of creating a game design program for a group of high school aged learners from the most underrepresented segment in the local industry, what would be your strategy, given that no assumptions can be made about this group's exposure to video games.
Thank you
This coming Wednesday (24th June) I'd like to start a discussion around education and the games industry.
A little background may be helpful to understand what prompted this.
I've been in contact with an organization which aims to teach high school girls from less privileged backgrounds to code. The girls enter the program through a week long boot camp, which in my opinion perhaps a little unfortunately, focuses largely on HTML and a little JavaScript. I'm hoping to put together a similar boot camp at the end of the year or early next year which follows on from the original camp and focuses on interactive media/game design. A week is not a very long time, so I would like to put together a program which is engaging whilst equipping them to learn more about the topic.
More generally, being a student, I'm also interested in what the local industry has to say about game design/development education.
I have invited A/ Prof. James Gain, as a lecturer in the games course at UCT, I feel that he will help to provide another perspective on the matter. Hopefully he is able to make it.
Anyway, I'm posting a series of questions here prior to the discussion in the hope that it will encourage more thoughtful commentary on the matter. If anyone would like to prepare something, please let me know, then we could make it more like a panel discussion. As I don't want to monopolize the evening, I think we'll have to time-box the discussion a little.
So here goes:
1. What are the first things an aspiring game developer/designer should learn?
2. What are the most important skills a student needs to learn in order to be an effective designer/developer?
3. Extrapolating from the current trajectory the games industry is taking in South Africa, how do you believe the skills mix will change, and how does will this compare to the industry internationally? In other words, will there be an increased demand for graphics programmers for example.
4. Do you believe that the local game industry is being adequately served by tertiary institutions in South African, and keeping in mind that tertiary institutions wish to produce internationally employable graduates, in what way could tertiary institutions bolster their offerings?
5. As demonstrated by the recent industry survey, there is a notable lack of diversity in both race and gender in the games industry in South Africa. This is likely in part due to both privilege and culture. I've long felt that game design could be a fantastic medium for stealthily reinforcing high school mathematics and physics, not to mention programming.
Taking this into account, if you were faced with the slightly terrifying prospect of creating a game design program for a group of high school aged learners from the most underrepresented segment in the local industry, what would be your strategy, given that no assumptions can be made about this group's exposure to video games.
Thank you
Comments
I think that with high school students (and younger), it's more important to inspire and encourage, and to create opportunities for students to teach themselves things, especially after the course/workshop has ended. I think the goal is to try to get them to "play" with making games, to find that in itself enjoyable, and to do it themselves in their own time. (I think it's particularly great because students in high school often have plenty of time, especially when they're not involved with a lot of extramural activities.) I don't think teaching skills or doing things "correctly" are important at all, as long as they're simply inspired or curious enough to do something, whether it's making board games, or drawing, or modelling in a 3D package, or making Twine games or websites.
That's about all of the reply that my brain can handle right now. :P
For me, if you only have a week you're never going to teach someone "how to make games". But hopefully you can stimulate curiosity, empowering them by showing them they are capable (though bear in mind that might look radically different in an audience that has low to zero computer literacy) - and most importantly show them how they can learn more and go deeper down the rabbit hole.
This last one in particular is the one that always trips me up, as access to IT and internet in this country is so poor. One laptop per child and project of the like set out to solve this, but I have no idea if such initiatives exist in this country. There are also great learning resources like scratch I've been using on my 6 and 8 year old niece and nephew. It teaches procedural thinking without needing to be able to type and minimal reading. But in the case, I know they have access to an ipad and internet that makes it a bit different.
At least when it comes to the teaching there are many resources online (just search for "teaching kids to code")
Tynker is another great platform, slightly more advanced and up to date than scratch:
https://www.tynker.com/