“Playing the Fool: Trying to design a truly entertaining game can defeat even a certified genius”, Wired magazine, April 2008
A brief story about Ted Castronova’s team of grad students who created Arden: The World of William Shakespeare appears with a short list of dos and don’ts for academic novices who plan to create a game around their favorite subject. Interestingly, UNCG also created a full-blown immersive game about the same time (see “ECON 201: A University Economics Course as an Online Computer game”) in which Dean Robert Brown offered a short list of suggestions.
In both examples there’s a common theme of “academia meets the real world” and both efforts deserve much praise for trying. (I served a brief stint consulting on the UNCG job. From what I had heard, the UNCG game cost far more than anticipated. I warned them about their short timeline—I think they were setting aside part of Spring and all of the Summer to launch a Fall game— given their lack of experience. And indeed, the game didn't launch until the following year.)
It makes me wonder though what Castronova and his team were thinking about when they belatedly recognized the game made average players yawn even if Shakespeare experts cheered. And given the presumed large cost overruns associated with delivering a game 6 months later than planned, Dean Brown’s suggestion to “secure external funding if possible” makes me wonder how academics can expect to sustain such costs in the development of future products. Creating a second iteration would certainly cost less and doubtless both teams learned a lot about the professional world of game design and development. But there are problems holding a team together — grads move on and Castronova conceded the need for a full-time staff. In my own experience, the longterm problem is that universities don't have the right model to produce the kind of high production value games they'd like. Universities have the content and subject matter experts but not the discipline and resources to produce game-like experiences. Commercial game designers have the know-how to produce and sell entertainment but they’re apt to compromise on accuracy and details in ways that are not scholarly acceptable. (Castronova promises that version 2 of his Shakespeare game will have less text and more sword fighting. To me, this sounds like a dubious strategy.)
I believe there’s a method to combine the two whose solution is not found in funding or entertainment (“edutainment”) but in Art. Art offers depth and profound, immersive experiences. It is complex. It reveals new meanings over time. It is unique. It does not seek to hide its limitations. It is, above all, an intensely human expression, and a vital part of every culture. It is also difficult to achieve, but not because of insufficient funds or new technologies that replace old ones. Making art from lifeless stone, paint, film or pixels is a hard process, period. (At Yale, the favorite term was “rigorous”.) It requires artistic know-how, an understanding of materials, craft, history, and a lengthy time of practice. Most efforts end in failure or worse, mediocrity. Probably this is why this approach to games is not been favored, but it leaves me wondering how much better technologists’ approaches have been. After all, there are lots of unemployed and under-employed artists whose specialized skills and creativity are exactly what’s been missing in the Western world. Universities want games that have meaning and see entertainment as a means to that end. If they want to achieve this, then they will have to make games that aspire to Art and nothing less.
On June 28, 2008 the Wall Street Journal writer Junot Diaz raised the bar of critical thinking about games when he measured them as an art form. See ‘Grand’ but No ‘Godfather’.
