Because this course has a gate for the Exam It seems like I wont be able to write it. It really bums me out, but I'd thought I'd take the time to make a blog about everything I've experienced in this course.
First year had my hopes up, being a game design course makes it sound pretty fun. It had its ups and downs, courses like Business of Gaming and the writing course. They had teachers who understood the students perceptive. Communication was key and every student knew what was going to happen in the course and what they had to do. Then there was stuff like Algorithms and game physics, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Classes that tried, but a lot of students left feeling bitter about it. Some of those courses didn't even come back, some good some bad. Overall first year wasn't a let down, but it wasn't crystal clear. It became apparent that GDW was a separate course, even though it was worth 25%. The problem with GDW is that the connection only goes one way, your game is part of your classes, but your classes never teach you how to make a game. A lot of the course was learning on my own online, and I later learned that was a large theme of the course.
Fun little mention here, our marketing teacher called us all "suckers" for having android phones, and said that consoles where dead and that there would be no next gen. She had no place teaching us about the industry.
I can't mention first year without a shout out to Tassos and Emilian. These guys single-handedly passed a large section of this course's students. Our year was known as the "year that didn't get pointers" and it's still known as that today. I swear Ken Finney said it himself. Tassos and Emilian ran an "optional" tutorial outside of class in the game lab to help us first years get what we needed. Let me say the only people who got this far in the course showed up to those tutorials. Thats a serious problem, the only people getting through your course are people who managed to go out of normal school regulations, to get help from older years. Help that may I remind, Tassos and Emilian didn't have to do so thank you guys.
Second year, my hopes where less, but not small enough. I got introduced to Hogue and his "land Mine" courses. Fail either Graphics or animations and you might as well drop your year, cause you have to start over. This was intimidating, what didn't help was Hogue's attitude towards student failure. Personally I was a programmer at the time, and those courses didn't really effect me, but I saw it effect others a lot. How Hogue taught wasn't teaching, it was a challenge. He'd take basic concepts and theories and talk about them, and then threw the technical part to yourself. Sure the TA went through coding, but that didn't really relate to anything that the Hogue part of the course was teaching. This pretty much applied to both graphics and animations.
There is no way I can let Game Design slip by this rant. That course had two options, to be good at a technical standard, or be good on a personal level. Students wouldn't of minded a Game design Course of long write ups, or one about just making games and enjoying your time. The course was neither, it was run by a TA who didn't know what she was doing and the origination and thought of the course was so bad it failed a lot of people and gave a lot of students who had 80% averages much less. Not to mention that the year before us had the same class with less of the problems. When there is a comparable example with the same name it makes a course look bad. A lot of my year's students agreed as class turn ups got close to the single digits late in the semester. Fun Fact: I failed game design last year, This year I'm taking the second year Game design, taught by Pejman. The third years are taking the SAME course with Pejman. By failing game design i still got to take the next game design. Some true design flaws.
There was also the accounting and entrepreneurship courses, whats not to love. Professors contacting the class on blackboard saying "Is anybody gonna show up today, i don't feel like going". Or accounting teachers doing the usual scam of having a new edition of the textbook each year, all written by them. These Courses really added a bad smell to the rotting body that the course was showing.
There is one really easy way to clean up this course and it all revolves around the most important part of it, GDW. The disconnect of this class really leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the 1st,2nd, and 3rd years I've talked to. They've stayed they really felt like the game was really thrown on them, and this leaves the game to be made by the lead programmers. What this course needs is a solid ground on the GDW, so far it really doesn't fit. The 25% in each class should be something entire classes should cover, they should have different sections for each member of a group based on there roles. They're thrown off as this mandatory thing the class needs, but they should be bigger than that. And if a class can't find a way of incorporating all the group members and their jobs, that class shouldn't be part of the curriculum. An Example would be this Game Engines class. looking at the homework theres tones of work you god split between artists, programmers, and level designers. Even producer wouldn't be left out by adding some sound design. If GDW was that connected it wouldn't feel like the job it does now. GDW feels just like a separate thing thats added to your issues in any course and thats a problem.
I hope this course grows into something more tangible and workable. There are many students I know that deserve to make it this far and didn't, and thats a problem I hope they learn from and fix in the future.
