John Hopson has a quite critical article on academic game research over at Gamasutra: We’re Not Listening: An Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers.
But honestly, even I walk past most of the academic presentations at industry events. Even I have trouble really getting excited about most of the games research being done out there. From the perspective of someone on the inside, the average piece of academic games research just doesn’t get the job done. It’s not a question of the quality of the research or the intelligence of the researcher or the game makers; it?s a question of bridging the gap between the academic and business cultures.
I must admit that I am a “cup is half full” kind of guy on these matters. It just isn’t possible to make everybody happy all the time. Of course, when I really am trying to make developers happy, I would like them to be, and the article has some good ideas for that. But there is still work to be done on the managing of expectations:
The researcher must lay out the entire impact of the idea, from the cost of implementing the proposal to the resulting changes in player experience and the metrics for measuring that impact. Getting players to identify with the main character is great, but researchers have to finish the rest of the sentence: “This will help players identify more strongly with the main character which will result in an improvement in measures of overall player satisfaction and an increase in total playing time.”
Actually laying out the cost of implementing a change on a specific project – I would be happy to help, but I need more data than what’s publicly available.
*
That said, I am actually working on some research that is intended to both satisfy a purely theoretical curiosity, and to lead to recommendations like the one above – “do this, and player satisfaction will increase“.
Do that, and game developer satisfaction will increase.
I disagree with that article on a few points. But from the people I have spoken to in the industry I get the impression that they don’t understand the research side.
I feel as a games researcher that maybe I should publish an article entitled: “We weren’t talking to You”. The games industry is dying, and MS games research can continue approving of sequels to clones of 10 year old games, I’m interested in talking to the “game industry”‘s successors.
I’m an indie developer who has grown up listening to acadmics, rather than developers. It isn’t developers’ jobs to teach people (out side of their company). Most of the time, they’ll tell you about real technicalities, or simply embellish their most recent game’s selling points. They’re not great teachers.
Academics aren’t perfect at giving you what-you-need-to-know. But they’re not there for that, really. Learning to code, learning the tools of the trade, and learning about business and politics is up to each individual. Academics (I’ve found) force me to think a lot harder about the creative aspects of game design.
So I’m in agreement with Ben, and hoping that those who have listend to academics will inheret the earth.
As I said, I don’t worry much about this. I wouldn’t expect the industry to wholeheartedly embrace academic research on games – and just the fact that industry publications have begun to mention academic research is a sign of progress.
Aubrey, does that mean that those who listen to academics are meek?
I am the meekest.
I think perhaps the points been missed, from a nuts and bolts standpoint (business) executives want “value add” research.
In other industries this AND data are readily available, why should games research be any different?
Research grants get funded from companies who recieve the subsequent benifit of innovation in every social and hard science.
Its less about whos providing what value to whom and when, than it is about being abile to communicate your needs as a party to advancing the academic and business aspects of the same thing (games).
If you cannot communicate, they will fund someone else with grants who can, every experianced professor knows this. Its a two way street, executive need to understand the trends in the ivory tower just as much as academics need to understand the trends in business….
>>I feel as a games researcher that maybe I should publish an article entitled: ?We weren?t talking to You?…. I’m interested in talking to the ?game industry??s successors. >>
AMEN! I could not agree more.
There should certainly be more communication between academia and the industry, or else game studies will become as detached (and neglected) as film studies from the movie industry. We should start building the bridge right now, or else we will end up with a sad chasm between both areas. We (scholars) could try starting to talk to them for starters, because there are a few game designers/makers who are willing to listen. Dismissing the whole industry as dead and gone is as bad a move as pretending that academic research should be cheap R&D for the industry, in my opinion.
Clara, I agree. I don’t think the game industry is exactly dying (and every day I am happy about the good games I get to play).
It’s all part of the plan: It just takes a while for researchers to learn to speak a language that developers find useful, and it takes a while for developers to figure out when researchers are speaking to them.
I think Ben and Jane’s vehemenence is interesting. If we aren’t talking to developers, then to whom are we talking? Or phrased more provocatively, are we really only interested in engaging in intellectual masturbation?
Of course this is a (gross) over-simplification of their position.
It is worth asking Hopson to which kinds of research he was referring. Jane and Ian presented wonderful examples of applied research that would be immediately useful to game designers at last year’s GDC. So it does exist.
And there is a growing body of work surrounding deeper questions and philosophies of play. This form of research is more ‘out there’ to the developer. it doesn’t solve an immediate need. But it hopefully points to a larger trend that can be exploited by the vigilant or curious. Current designers and developers ignore it (at their peril) and this will result in Aubrey (meekly) leading the charge to claim the future of game design.