Concentrations
As game design matures and the field grows, we're seeing an increased incidence of specialization even within the field of game design itself. Experience designing one type of title does not necessarily qualify one to design another type. While certain principles apply to all game design branches, different specific types of study will uniquely benefit specific types of game design. These concentrations are intended to provide guidance in selecting academic courses to fill elective space (not just specific concentration electives but science and art electives as well) as well as practical emphasis guidance in specific activities sought in internships in ideal situations.
The following is intended to be (like the rest of this) a rough framework or suggested starting place for game design concentrations:
- Game Systems Design
- Academic emphasis: mathematics; statistics; graph theory; physics;
- Practical emphasis: game balancing
- Game genre: turn-based strategy; RTS
- Game Content Design*
- Academic emphasis: writing; narratology; storytelling; drawing;
- Practical emphasis: level design
- Game genre: interactive narrative (text-based or linear/convergent graphical game); MMO
- World Building
- Academic emphasis: history; writing; architecture; natural sciences;
- Practical emphasis: sourcebook writing
- Game genre: MMO; RPG
* I should note here that by "game content design" I do not mean "narrative design" even though I'm suggesting the word narrative with narratology, nor do I mean "game writer", which should really be a traditionally educated writer (and there are many schools implied when I say "tradition," including the Ray Bradbury School of Hard Knocks) who also studies games. These are separate fields that enhance game design but are not game design and deserve "homes" in their own programs. I think that a perfect game writing degree would probably be something more like a creative writing/scriptwriting major with a game studies or game design minor.
Why This is Important
Game developers and academics have been reluctant to build bridges toward each other out of varying levels of xenophobia and mutual resentment. The reason why building those bridges and actually establishing a language and context to learn and study game design is important comes down to quality of life in terms of how our effectiveness at practicing our craft impacts all that we do. Game design is itself the crucial planning and management phase core to game development, and if we can't utilize the great engine of academia to figure out how to do it better, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
There is a second level of quality of life impact in that we need to be aware of where our game developers go when they leave the commercial field. In an ideal world, we would each make scads of money off of the royalties (yeah, that's another column) of our wildly successful games - but chances are that, for most of us, this won't be the case: whether because we don't make scads of money or because we never become the type of people bored enough to retire into watching reruns of Judge Judy all day.
I don't intend that this is by any means comprehensive or definitive, but the important thing is that we initiate and actively participate in the conversation.
