Bachelor of Computer and Information Science in Game Design and Development
Hi guys,
I work at a private higher education provider and we've had a degree (as per the title) accredited by the requisite higher education authorities in SA (i.e. CHE, DHET). We're going to be rolling the degree out next year and I have a couple of questions for everyone.
Obviously as part of the accreditation process and curriculum design we have outlines for each of the modules in the degree but no specific detail so we have the perfect opportunity to now develop industry relevant content.
My questions are:
1. What programming languages should the students be proficient in (we can do 2 languages max). My thinking is either Java/C# and definitely C++. We also have mobile development (Android for now but this can also be changed).
2. We're planning on using Blender, Unity and DirectX for the development and design...this would include course on 2D and 3D animation, some mathematics (Cartesian planes etc.).
3. We also have modules on Creative writing for gaming, principles of game design (psychology behind different genres, character design, plot development etc.) and digital law and ethics amongst other more fundamental IT modules (e.g. database, systems analysis and design etc.).
I look forward to getting your input and reading the discussions.
I work at a private higher education provider and we've had a degree (as per the title) accredited by the requisite higher education authorities in SA (i.e. CHE, DHET). We're going to be rolling the degree out next year and I have a couple of questions for everyone.
Obviously as part of the accreditation process and curriculum design we have outlines for each of the modules in the degree but no specific detail so we have the perfect opportunity to now develop industry relevant content.
My questions are:
1. What programming languages should the students be proficient in (we can do 2 languages max). My thinking is either Java/C# and definitely C++. We also have mobile development (Android for now but this can also be changed).
2. We're planning on using Blender, Unity and DirectX for the development and design...this would include course on 2D and 3D animation, some mathematics (Cartesian planes etc.).
3. We also have modules on Creative writing for gaming, principles of game design (psychology behind different genres, character design, plot development etc.) and digital law and ethics amongst other more fundamental IT modules (e.g. database, systems analysis and design etc.).
I look forward to getting your input and reading the discussions.
Comments
Few questions from me:
1. What institution is this course going to be offered at? :)
2. How many games will the course ask the students to create?
3. What type of game developers are you hoping to produce? Independent, AAA, generalist, freelance, 'serious game devs' etc.
4. Do you have anyone qualified/knowledgeable to teach in these fields in mind to teach these courses? This might be a bottleneck - the number of people qualified (academically) is tiny. Those knowledgeable might not be interested in lecturing either. :).
1. It will be offered by Vega Bordeaux and Varsity College (not sure which area yet and also not sure if they're committed to offering it yet).
2. There are a lot of opportunities for students to create games. The focus in the specialised modules will be on different aspects of gaming e.g. creating characters/maps and writing plots. Student mostly have assignments and at the end of the semester have to put together a portfolio of those assignments which build on each other to create an end product. At the end of their 3rd year all those aspects are brought together to produce a complete game which incorporates all the learning (animation, graphics, plot/character/map development, programming of the nuances in a game etc. Lecturers also give activities during the semester and these will definitely be directed to the discipline. You need to remember this is a degree so there is a certain amount of theory that needs to be covered (otherwise it would be a diploma which is mostly practical) and no student completes a degree and is instantly ready to be integrated into the workplace. There is always some sort of growth and adjustment to the working environment. Because this is an accredited degree there are certain curriculum design "rules" we need to abide by as determined by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in South Africa. If these are not adhered to the qualification would never have been accredited.
3. We initially aim to produce generalists and hopefully once they enter the workplace they can select to either go into game design or serious game development which hopefully enable them to eventually freelance or become independent. I think some exposure to an environment where they see the whole process is beneficial before they go freelance/independent. We were also careful to include enough for the students to be able to go into a business in the gamification of business processes or take the career path of a developer. This was due to the small gaming industry we have in SA and at the end of 3rd year the students may wish to diversify into different careers.
4. Vega have qualified lecturers in this field. They're known for their branding, multimedia and graphic designers and their students in those fields always get snapped up. They have experts in animation and game design but lack the expertise in programming. Those lecturers will be sourced this year (for the first year which is more generalist) and they must all have at least an Honours (again CHE rules) and experience in the field. This will be the challenging area but we have "emergency" plans if required. I do have numerous contacts with academics in this field and in programming so I don't foresee any critical problem. We have also had enquiries from academics at public universities who, due to the ongoing problems on campus, are looking for alternatives. If there are any qualified gamers on this forum I'd love them to come forward to discuss lecturing opportunities. They can PM me.
That said, I believe that you should be looking for game design experience and a familiarity with game design skills and requirements is very important for anyone working in the games industry. The best analogy I can provide is that a game designer is similar to an architect, its their job to understand how all the other fields involved in building a house interact with each other, as well as the laws that house needs to obey, while also being creative in coming up with solutions that both express creativity and mollify the needs of the people contracting them to produce a house, then working with everyone involved along the way to deal with issues that come up during construction. If you start calling a draftsperson an architect, you'll still get good looking plans, but you won't get a good house at the end of it. This is backwards. Unsurprisingly, this is also the way many courses choose to teach game development skills because that's the model they're used to and they make the assumption that "producing a playable game" is the end-point of game development. It's actually the beginning, the same way an equals sign and completing an equation is not the end-point of years of maths learning. Imagine trying to have any coherent understanding of maths at all if you were taught mathematical concepts without referring to an equation being equal to something! "Here's 2+2, learn it. Now we're moving on to square roots! Algebra is magic, things can just disappear! 7x + 2 is a line, you should just know this..." And then suddenly, after years of learning things this way, you're suddenly told that equals exists as a concept. "It's =4. What do you mean this is confusing? All the magic stuff you did has to balance out, it's obvious! y = 7x + 2, yeah that other axis had a name all along..."
Obviously that would never produce people who feel comfortable with maths, let alone competent mathematicians! Just like we introduce the concept of equals in maths super early and build more and more understanding and complexity on top of that basic axiom, so game development needs to be built on constantly producing playable games. Start simple, a turn-based game loop with no graphics, minimal input and basic win/loss states (hangman). Then bolt on more and more elements from there: Real time game loop (tetris), game states (text adventures), graphics and scene data (minesweeper), complex input and basic collisions (crimson land), etc... Each time a new concept is introduced, your students should be using that to build a new game. Don't study narrative writing before they've ever put a game in front of a player before! All you're going to get is a slew of "final games" that have cumbersome backstories that ate hours of time that could have been put into gameplay.
The idea of assignments on specific areas of learning all magically coming together at the end of a semester to produce a single game is also a common one. It can't work in the same way that building bits of a house as people learn the various fields and expecting them all to come together results in a terrible house that's a collection of kludges: Plumbing running above the floor, windows knocked out of walls, no lintels above doors so everything's cracking, electric wiring all over the place, etc. It's better to build a series of stand-alone houses, one with plumbing, one with electrical wiring, etc. That way learners get to focus on understanding things instead of trying to figure out how to make things work together where no room was left for them in the first place. I can't tell you how many projects I've looked at that have had zero coherence and are visibly just a pathfinding exercise tacked onto a 3D terrain rendering test with an unrelated UI and random NPC conversations (because they needed to show off writing, somehow) with no resulting gameplay because that's not a thing you can teach in a module.
And don't worry, there's loads of theory out there to fulfill whatever requirements are placed on the course. You just need to make that theory relevant by having students apply it (and in many cases TEST it, this is a growing field akin to particle science in the 60s, things will be taught that aren't always solid) as they learn. That doesn't make something a diploma, it makes it useful. This is especially important in fields where those teaching may not have the luxury of years of experience to draw from, like game art, game programming and game design. And this is why you should teach your students business. They need to be able to evaluate the market they're graduating into, consider their own skills and goals and make the best choices they can. This requires general business knowledge. And knowledge of the business of games.
Finally, please be careful when sourcing lecturers. Many people assume that game programming is easy if you've already studied general programming, this is not true. It is equally untrue for animation, art, writing, etc. People with existing qualifications in these areas but no game development experience will tend to dive right in and make massive assumptions about the game development part of it, because "how different could it be?". The answer is very. So please ensure that lecturers have relevant experience so they can at least avoid the most common pitfalls.
More game development courses are a good thing, but we need good game development courses if they're going to serve both the hopeful students that sign up to them and the local industry.
Although preferable, it's not possible to teach all aspects of any discipline in a 3 year degree. As part of the curriculum design the requirement by the CHE and SAQA is that a 3 year degree have a minimum credit value of 360 credits.
Credits are an indicator of the volume of learning required for the completion of a module / qualification and are based on notional hours. 1 credit = 10 hours. A ‘notional hour’ includes any activity which a student is involved in that relates to mastering the module (e.g. this could include: reading of textbooks/articles, homework, contact hours in the classroom, practical lab time completing activities, preparing for and writing an assignment, study time, assessments, etc.). Contact class time is never more than 30% of the notional hours.
Our aim is to produce graduates who are more prepared for game design and developers rather than the generalist graduate who has had no exposure to this discipline.
Anyhow, thank you for your valuable input and if there are any experienced developers on this forum with a desire to contribute to education and would like to assist the next generation of potential game designers and developers we would really appreciate your input and would most welcome any offers to lecture (provided you have an honours)...if not, we can still use you as a guest lecturer on occasion.
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For example, creating multiple games (not just separate components of a game) throughout the degree is an achievable goal that does not actually make someone immediately employable (especially when these games have alternative goals as prescribed by the course work), but it does give the student a huge amount of practical information that cannot be learnt in another way.
As an employer considering potential employees for game development positions on a regular basis, the difference between an applicant with a portfolio of games (even if they're from course work and generally not very good) and someone without a portfolio is so huge that the latter group (those without a portfolio) have basically zero chance of getting a job. I've seen multiple CVs that list "made a path-finding component" or "learnt how to do networking", but those get ignored in favour of people that have a collection of games that demonstrate that behaviour. From my perspective, if someone had just completed a course but didn't have a portfolio of games and they were looking for a job in the industry, my only advice for them would be to make a bunch of games and create said portfolio (which they typically cannot afford to do because they've just finished studying an expensive degree). So why not include this as a major part of the course work? Especially because it is also guaranteed to accomplish multiple other minor goals within the curriculum.
If the goal is to help students kick start a career, then they should at least be given the correct names for what they would like to do and to actively avoid imparting incorrect assumptions. As an employer I'd rather hire a programmer with a regular CS degree than someone with a game programming qualification that wanted to fight me about every aspect of the job because they had been taught that everything only comes together at the end. At least the CS grad is going to be making predictable incorrect assumptions that can be handled without the weight of 3 years of active reinforcement of those incorrect assumptions and the cognitive dissonance created by working hard under them to earn a degree. I expect onboarding, I don't want to deal with more of it than necessary. Nothing I wrote was suggesting you teach all aspects of game development in a 3 year degree. I actively stated that wasn't possible because game development is evolving so rapidly and things are nowhere near set in stone in the first place. All I'm suggesting is that the assumptions about game development that are historically made when new courses get set are actually challenged this time and held up against the reality of the profession and the understanding required. If you were trying to teach homeopathic theory as the fundamental core of an accredited medical degree and ignoring medical science and evidence, I'd expect practicing doctors to respond similarly. I was going to be snarky about credits not being fungible, but I think I see what you're getting at here. You have to fill a certain amount of a student's time with activities that will help them learn and understand a potential career or area of learning. That's fine. What I've been talking about are ways to make that time be more efficient and useful for students. I can understand potential pushback in that doing things differently to how other fields work means teaching load is different or the course is more difficult to set... My response to that is, predictably, "So? Teach the reality in ways that are relevant please."
The addend bonus that making games can be really rewarding, provided you're producing constantly playable things, means that students will be more likely to exceed their credit-mandated hours on projects that they enjoy showing to people and fiddling with. Which definition of game design is being used here? Are we talking art production roles, or the overarching systemic job that I tried to explain above?