GES Writing Panel -Or- Favorite Lee Sheldon quips.

At GES 2008 a panel told attendees that the videogame industry does not hire writers; that writers and designers are the same thing; and that game writers cannot be taught. This panel I was attending at GES 2009 @ Carnegie Mellon's ETC was challenging these assumptions. It was a lively discussion and I picked up some great quotes!

Panelists:

Sande Chen. 10 years, 14 published credits "The Witcher" USC Film School

Lee Sheldon. Writer / Producer in Hollywood. Worked on soaps, Star Trek: The Next Generation (STNG), Charlie's Angels. Virtual worlds to ARGs.

Elisabeth Nonas. "I do not write games." Teaches screen writing for 15 years. "Should I be here?" she wondered aloud.

Richard Dansky. Red Storm / Ubisoft.

Lee Sheldon had good things to say, and contributed some of my favorite aspects to this discussion. Some samples of his thoughts and ideas early in the talk:

• "TV soaps have story and character. But no special effects."

• "The game industry is finally realizing the importance of story."

• "Story is normally added to a finished videogame. Or done first. And then dismissed."

Art - Programming - Design - Writing --> this is the core team before a project gets huge.

Companies do not have iterations built into the schedule for writing. (This sounds familiar: my experience at Hasbro Games as a senior designer was that game design iterations were not built into the schedule, either. Improving your game was for evenings and weekends!)

Drew Davidson asked, "How can we get students to explain their game without always resorting to telling a story of the game?"

Metal Gear Solid 4: "A video with sporadic fits of game play." Hilarious.

Emergent story telling. Lee likes seeding player behavior. (I assume he is referring to ARGs.)

Club Penguin takes chat room rumors and turns them into real content. Brilliant!

MMO's are notoriously hard to write.

Lee Sheldon admits, "I have given up on the people who create (video) games right now. We need Pixar to start doing game development." Gasp. Wouldn't that be incredible? (Or is that Incredibles?)

Some one asks, "Should game writing be taught in an English department?" This sets off a flurry of passionate discussion, mostly about entrenched academia and how difficult it is to change the curriculum in high school english. Members of the audience moan about how tough it is to collaborate with some people in academia. Again, Lee Sheldon comes to the rescue: "Work with them until they die." Meaning, new ideas mainly take root when those people who are in positions of power move on and no longer cause road blocks. But I like how bluntly Lee put it!

Someone quipped this observation: "Game writing and game design is considered the evil step child of academia." It could have been Lee Sheldon, but it's been a few weeks since I took these notes.

Lee Sheldon works with 60% of the department's grants. Money is flowing in. Industry identifies that games are a tool. "Games are a server with an AI over it." Very interesting perspective! Thanks Lee...

Building Northeastern U's Game Design Curriculum From Scratch

Terrence Masson, Director of Creative Industries @ Northeastern and Siggraph 2010 Chair, spoke at the Games in Education Summit 2009.

As a producer he appreciates clarity of communication. He saw a funny tag on a piece of luggage at the airport; it said, "No, yours is the other black bag." haha

Terrence's background is similar to my own: animation, visual effects, game development, and commercials. He also does special venues, which sounds very interesting. He used the the ETC as a model and designed his curriculum on the team based environment of "Left / Right brain development."

He still has his 1974 Dungeons & Dragons graph paper! And he shared a photo of himself with Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D, who sadly passed away last year. Terrence was thankful that he did some game design with Gary Gygax. Very cool! Game Design is Terrance's passion. Awesome.

Terrence's 15 minute claim to fame: He helped the South Park creators to build an animation pipeline for their now successful show.

Why create a Game Design program? Some statistics: the 2007 world market for movies was $26.7 billion. The 2007 world market for games? $40 BILLION. That's pretty convincing.

Terrence sits on the advisory committee for Boston's Mayor Menino, who is trying to stimulate the local creative economy with City and State initiatives. (My thoughts: the Mayor's link is an interesting article in Edge magazine, even though some angry game industry-insiders rage against Menino's efforts to address inappropriate video game content.) Terrence explained that 16 game companies came to Boston in the past 2 years. Very cool.

I'm excited for the 2010 Powering Up Boston conference...

At Northeastern, a 10 year program called "Multimedia Studies" has now evolved into the current Creative Industries Program.

He promised his colleagues that he would say "pedagogical." Ripple of laughter in the audience from the educators. Oh... pedagogy means "the principles and methods of instruction. (I think it is much cooler to spell it "paedagogy"; love the 'ae' as a one letter thing...)

Terrence researched over 60+ game design curriculums around the world. He found it is the rare institution that offers a BFA in Game Design. Teaching game design, Terrence stressed the quest for excellence, and how he "scares the crap out of the students." New students are shocked, "This is really hard!" He advocates constant feedback and constant critiques.

Not surprising, Terrence admits that "Today's 18 year olds have abysmal writing skills."

A course in Games in Society is mandatory for all students. The audience loved looking at the slides with course loads for a a typical load of classes for a game design student. Just fascinating.

Class Structure. The admission of 12 kids per class drew wide-eyed stares of envy. (I love watching the crowd during presentations; they really put things in perspective.)

Pitch Structure. Students must create 3 pitches for a game. Each 'elevator pitch' is 30 seconds in length and illustrated on white boards with story thumbnails. Nice!

Capstone Structure. Team based collaboration is key. Projects are created with a range of specialized students from across the university to mimic how games are created in industry; Graphic Design, Music, Art, Psychology, Computer Science + Project Managers.

Coop Program. Students go on coop in their "Middler Years" for two 6-month stints at professional game companies in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. This Coop Program keeps the faculty on the "bleeding edge," Terrence admits, as students return from work and share their experiences with the technology that is being used to make computer games today.

They don't teach tools. I repeat, Northeastern's game design program does not teach tools. They teach 1 credit Tool courses and prepare students for the ever evolving nature of computer tools. Their lab is replaced every 3 years. And best of all? It is all Mac based, currently with Leopard and X Grid servers.

Such a great look into a professional game design program! I can't wait to check in with Terrence this summer and continue this conversation.

Games Across Media

Drew Davidson, Director of ETC-Pittsburgh, spoke about storytelling across multiple access points on Day 1 of the Games in Education Summit 2009. Know as "cross media", "trans media" and "convergent media" (a term attributed to Henry Jenkins).

The idea with trans media? It's storytelling with multiple access points to a fictional world. We all are familiar with books being made into movies (and vice versa.) But also think about a story (be it a novel, movie, TV show, comic book, etc.) existing in games, websites, and even on billboards! (where clues to an ARG, or Alternate Reality Game, are hidden on a real world advertisement; for example, you notice something on a poster in the subway and input that data into a web browser to launch a "secret" game. Very cool.)

OK. Enough linkage. I want to share some points that I found interesting in this talk.

• Sims3. This game was released on the iPhone for $10 at the same time as the PC version.

• Giant Eagle. (Pronounced "gine iggle" to native Pittsburghers) now offers fuel perks that "track and follow you." Huh? First I'd heard of this. I need to read more on this idea of giving up a little privacy for additional benefit and convenience (like those Speed Pass transponders we put up on our car windshields to zip through tolls. Big Brother now knows where you vacation!)

• Fan Fiction. J.K. Rowling shut down fans writing stories about her characters. But you can write a fan fiction of the Star Wars universe.

• Tent Pole. Define the "Tent Pole" or central experience that holds up all the other experiences.

• The Lost Experience. Clues to this Lost TV show game are hidden in the episodes. People are expected to DVR the show and go through frame by frame to find these hidden nuggets of gameplay. Really? I thought the Wii showed that most people are hungry for game experiences that don't consume all of our free time.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This property started out as a movie, then became a TV show for 7 seasons, after switching networks. Then Joss Whedon, the show's creator, did something very cool and is now offering a Season 8 of the show as a comic book!

• One Life to Live. "The Killing Club" This one is hard to follow: a character in a soap opera writes a mystery novel. The book actually gets published and is so successful that the character in the soap opera goes on real world book tours promoting the book that she "wrote" on the soap opera. This makes my head spin. A fictional author! Writing fiction when you yourself are a fictional character. Kind of like the A.I.s in the holodeck lounge on Star Trek Next Generation writing their own stories, huh?

• Give us a reason to hop between media. Too often, extensions of a core property are marketing driven opportunities that don't ask "Why am I doing this?" This sparked a memory. When the Pokémon game was released on Game Boy in 1996, it was originally available in *two* cartridges: Red and Blue. This was a brilliant ploy to get players to buy more cartridges (of course) and make gobs more money (that's what it is all about for many people). Yet the interaction of Red and Blue cartridges was core to the game experience. Reason? If you *traded* a Pokémon from a player using a different colored cartridge, then that creature would grow in strength and gain new powers *at a faster rate* than an untraded Pokémon! It was brilliant.

• Stories In Between. This is Drew Davidson's book. He wanted to make some available to sell at this talk. But Don Marinelli "gave them all away last week!" :-) I wanna check it out.

Don Marinelli's GES Keynote

Last month, I attended a seminar about games for education. I expected that we'd hear and discuss the many uses, challenges and advancements in games that teach. I was also excited to visit my hometown, Pittsburgh, and see family, friends and design colleagues. After two days of listening, wonderment and sparks of discussion at the ETC, I returned to Boston thinking in much grander terms.

Keynotes on Twitter

Billy Cain, self professed Geek / Catalyst did an outstanding job Twittering the two keynote addresses and I will not attempt to recreate his efforts. I encourage others to review Billy's rapid-fire tweet coverage of the presentations given by Don Marinelli, Executive Producer and Cofounder of the Entertainment Technology Center and Richard Hilleman, Chief Creative Director Worldwide of Electronic Arts.

Billy's reporting accuracy matches my own notes.

Do a Twitter search for "#GES BillyCain" to find his good stuff.

Background: my Game Design Game

A few years ago, I gave a couple presentations to first year ETC graduate students about game design and that is where I met Don Marinelli. I created a game about the process used to create games based on my experiences as a senior game designer at Parker Brothers and Hasbro Games in the 90's. The attendees played the game; I facilitated. It was a huge success.

Don Marinelli

Don exploded into his keynote with a booming greeting and a brief description of the ETC. And statistics. Some highlights from his talk:

• Our schools are still based on 18th century modes of thinking, so that children could spend the summer home with their families to help with the summer farm work!

• "Preaching to the choir?" Don asked, "Or a call to arms? We need a plan of attack. It is close to the time when kindergarten kids go on strike. Marching with little signs, 'Hell no, we won't go!'"

• In 1963, television was heralded as the technology that would transform teaching. As a young child, Don remembers marching into the gym to watch a beautiful woman on a single TV instructing everyone to listen and repeat phrases in Spanish. "This is a sham!" Don soon realized. "She said, 'Muy bien!' regardless of what you said or did. It was a technological solution that failed."

• Don is convinced that videogame technology will transform teaching.

• Games are games. The word itself has done us in. Hide or disguise the term. All attacks on games are focused on the extremes, he said. "The media loves a clear cut villain!"

• Education should be the essence of change. How can we make teaching and learning relevant to a changing world? "We could now get along fine without knowing Latin!" Don effused, much to the chagrin of the classical language academics in the room! LOL

• Angrily: "When Jurassic Park cleared 325 Million in sales, the movie was on the cover of Time magazine. That same year, a hedgehog named Sonic cleared 400 Million in sales. "There was no mention," Don growled. "Who is writing the news?"

• "When the home provides more cutting edge technology than what school can offer, things are bass ackwards!" So true.

• "Lawyers run companies and governments. Why not videogame students? Andrew Ender Wiggins, anyone?!" Great point, Don! (Referring to the oft-quoted science fiction story,

Ender's Game. Read it, if you haven't...)

• The secret of the ETC? Don said simply, "Let students teach each other."

• Share the fun, Don exudes!

• H.G. Wells began his writing career as a social class author. One of Don's favorite books by H.G. Wells is called Star Begotten. It is about a race of people waiting for The Enlightened Ones to return from the stars. Eventually, the people stop waiting and realize that they themselves are the Enlightened Ones!

More to Come...

Watch for additional short reports on my experiences at the following talks at the Games in Education Summit.

1. Games Across Media, a talk by Drew Davidson. He runs "the mothership" of the ETC in Pittsburgh, PA.

2. Building Northeaster University's Game Design Curriculum From Scratch, a presentation by Terrance Masson, Director of Creative Industries, Northeastern University + Siggraph 2010 Chair.

3. Should Game Writing Be a Part of the Curriculum? A panel discussion with Sande Chen, writer, Lee Sheldon, writer/producer in Hollywood, and Elisabeth Nonas, teacher of screen writing.

4. Creativity, Constraints and Compromises, a project discussion with Sande Chen, writer and Dr. Ricardo Rademacher, physics teacher and creator of Futur-e-scape, a fantasy MMORPG that teaches physics.

5. Making Serious Games Seriously Fun, a look at games by Aaron Vanderbeek, Long Distance: a board game and Todd Waits, VP of Product Development at Skill Life, an online game that aims to teach financial literacy.

6. Buddhist Death in Second Life, a fascinating and immersive experience created by Beth Davies-Stofka, teacher of religion and philosophy in Denver, CO. This was so amazing --- and was an "Aha moment" for me regarding the positive power of online worlds.

7. Physical Gaming: Beyond Mini-Games, a thought provoking and fun look at 6 games by Andrew Hieronymi's (SCAD) and his "deconstruction of a game." Brilliant stuff.

Note to self: ...

... Play more games!

Until then, meet interesting people, collaborate on cool game projects and attend game conferences as we all strive to elevate the Art of Game Making.

This blog has grown out of my desire to share my observations and insights while attending a trio of very exciting game conferences in 2009:

• GDC SF (the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco),

• IGC East (the Independent Game Conference @ Northeastern University in Boston) and

• GES (the Games in Education Summit in Pittsburgh, PA @ Carnegie Mellon's Electronic Entertainment Center, or E.T.C.)

It's kind of ridiculous how easy it was setting up this blog. I guess that's inertia for you; the smallest movement can get you *finally* moving in the right direction.