CCCC Game Programming and Design credentialOur Experience thus Far

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CCCC Game Programming and Design credentialOur
Experience thus Far

• Dr. Lewis Pulsipher
• Certificate devised by Bob Joyce and Mike Orsega
• Web site for this talk PulsipherGames.com/teachin
  g1.htm

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My Goals Today

• Our experiences with our game classes so far
• What we did in our first game class
• How our certificate is organized
• Discuss the diversity of the industrymuch more
  than video games
• I am not going to talk about game programming per
  se -- nor about game engines etc.

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Who am I

• Began playing commercial wargames in 1963
• Played the original Atari 2600 and have played
  some PC games heavily, but rarely play any video
  games these days never owned a game console
• Designer of five commercially-published board
  wargames next one forthcoming this Fall
  (Britannia Second Edition)
• Active designer of board and card games
  (playtesters solicited!)
• Also working on boardgames for online play
• My main job is teaching networking, Internet Tech

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CCCCs Philosophy

• Tom Sloper, Chris Crawford, others recommend
  well-rounded education for game industry workers
• Techniques change very quickly, so why teach
  specific techniques?
• We want people to understand games from the
  developer and manufacturer viewpoint, understand
  the industry, understand what makes games good
• Consequently, we do not need many classes, but
  they must be game-specific, and we must make games

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Courses in the Certificate

• CSC 192 Intro (Topics class) (2 credit hours)
  Fall
• CSC 293 (Topics class) (3 credits) Spring
• Students programming original games in DarkBasic
• GRA 151 Graphics in Gaming (2 credits) Spring
• Students programming games in Flash this may
  change
• CSC 285 Programming Project (3) Summer
• Students programming a boardgame they designed in
  CSC 192
• CIS 115 Intro to Programming (3) non
  game-specific
• CSC 134 C Programming (3) non game-specific
• MontE Christman, the game programming instructor,
  is teaching DarkBasic programming Saturday

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Intro to Gaming

• Two contact and credit hours would be better
  with three or four contact hours
• Two textbooks, one about game design, one about
  getting into the industry
• Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design.
  New Riders 1st edition (May 2003) 
• Break Into The Game Industry How to Get A Job
  Making Video Games by Ernest Adams. McGraw-Hill
  2003.
• Students individually required to create
  preliminary design for a video game and write a
  game treatment for it
• Students in groups required to design a prototype
  of a non-video game (board, card, etc.)
• No programming required in this class

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Intro to Gaming--Goals

• Make students aware that
• you cannot just take some classes and walk into a
  game industry job
• most people making a living from games do not
  work on Big-Time off-the-shelf video games
• programming is a small part of video game
  production
• owing to supply and demand, game programming/
  production is not a way to make much money
• enthusiasm is required, but is just a start

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Intro to Gaming--Atmosphere

• Essentially a literacy class, should be fun
• Provide real-world examples whenever possible
• Negotiation
• Experience of designing published games
• We did not play or look at video games
• Students already familiar with the games
• Not enough time
• Possible legal/philosophical objections to
  playing games in class

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Gaming Community

• Game and Computer Club
• Play video games on the big projector
• Playtest non-video games
• Not required participation
• As with all clubs at non-residential colleges,
  requires a high critical mass of number of
  studentsat present even CCCC isnt large enough

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Marketing

• First time around
• Flyers in local game shop
• College Web site
• Night section offered, no signups
• 10 people in day version, almost all of them were
  already students (or graduates) of our department
• This Fall
• Department Web site (computers.cccc.edu)
• Much recruiting in high school classes
• Mailing and Information sessions three evenings
  in June

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Results of the Class

• The programming-oriented students have continued
  to the next two classes
• One of the boardgames produced was quite good,
  being played many times by the group, now being
  programmed for play on a computer
• The computer game ideas tended to be quite
  derivative (sounded like lots of existing games),
  but thats the nature of the entire video-game
  industry, little risk-taking

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Credential Making Games

• Bottom line for the credential the students are
  making games, and pretty good ones at that
• Fighter-plane (Space Invaders) type
• Simple RPGs
• Magical Arena boardgame now being programmed for
  computer play
• Ive thought seriously about taking this
  boardgame in hand to improve for commercial
  purposes
• Download examples from computers.cccc.edu
• And they have something for their portfolio, not
  just a list of classes

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Video Games

• Many types, for example
• Big-time video games (both console and PC)
• Sold in Best Buy, Babbages, Staples, and the like
• Very visible but only a part of the industry
• Console and PC games are quite different
• Cont forget handhelds
• Online games
• Not the massively multiplayer games, the other
  online games
• Some for a charge, some for advertising
• Small games on other devicescell phones, PDAs,
  etc.

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Big-time Video Games

• Console games are very different from PC games
• I used to say computer games now I say video
  games
• Console games are simpler, less intellectual
• consoles are underpowered
• consoles market to teens/ Gen Y
• consoles lack keyboards
• the buyers dont want intellectual games
• Attitudes toward PC games from console gamers
• Would rather play on a console!
• Console game sales of same game are much larger
  (say from 3-1 to 10-1 ratio)

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Non-video Games

• Family boardgames
• Board wargames
• Traditional miniatures battles
• Role-playing games (DD etc.)
• Specialized card game (CCG, TCG)
• Specialized miniatures games (HeroClix)
• Euro-style boardgames

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Family boardgames

• Have a bad reputation among adults as most
  involve a lot of luck
• Still sell much more than other kinds of
  boardgames
• Examples
• Monopoly
• Game of Life
• Pachesi

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Board wargames

• Conflict oriented strategic games, often
  historically based
• 15,000 individual attendees each year at
  Origins convention (31st annual in Columbus OH,
  June 30-July 3, 2005) (includes non-video games
  of all kinds)
• Tends to be the domain of middle-aged gamers
  these days
• Examples
• Axis Allies
• Risk
• Diplomacy
• Britannia

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Traditional miniatures battles

• Tactical table-top battle games
• Mostly land-based
• One inch miniatures most popular, but there are
  other scales
• Painting and collecting usually as important as
  playing

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Role-playing Games

• Original commercial success was DD, 1973-4
• Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition hardcover book
  sales in the millions for the past five years
• Many DD related novels also published
• Most major movie/book properties have an
  associated role-playing game
• 50,000 person-days attendance at GenCon,
  Indianapolis, IN (next one August 05)
• Currently downward trend in sales

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Specialized card games

• Usually collectible cards
• Short game play, lots of tournaments, rules
  change over time
• These are the biggest moneymakers in the USA
  after big-time video games
• Examples
• Magic The Gathering
• Poke-mon, Yu-Gi-Oh
• Games for most major book/movie properties such
  as Lord of the Rings, Spiderman, Star Wars

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Specialized miniatures

• Many are pre-painted, collectibles with a game
  attached
• Examples
• Heroclix
• Heroscape
• WarHammer and related baroque Games Workshop
  games are a separate high-revenue hobby
• have their own retail store
• attractive to teenagers

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Euro-style boardgames

• Especially popular in Germany, where families
  play boardgames together every week
• Can sell over a million copies, comparable to
  most PC games
• Family games on steroids
• Much more strategy, but still enough chance for
  the kids
• Often somewhat abstract
• A dislike of dice is very noticeable
• Emphasis on appearance and tactile satisfaction
• Examples
• Settlers of Catan
• Ticket to Ride

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Some Observations

• The current generation (Y or millenialup to
  25 or 26 years old) really is different from
  earlier generations
• It is hard for many of them to understand that
  they need to work at finding a place in the
  industryit wont just happen even if they are
  skilled programmers
• Many tend to rely on trial and error, which is
  how theyve learned to play video games
• They are disinclined to read, preferring to see
  or hear (via computer, usually)
• Prenskys Digital Natives idea