Game Design Summer School for Students
When: from 30th of August till 3rd of September in 2010.
Where: Tampere, Finland,
Why: Educational games have always been low budget, low tech, poor cousins of the computer game industry. Up until recently, very few commercial companies provide good quality educational games. Historically, these games have been written by teachers and academics who wish to utilize the technology within there teaching, but usually do not have the skill, not the finance, to create a high quality product. Commercial recreational games cost millions of dollars to create and often have teams of a hundred on more people. To make this a viable business, the resulting product must reach a wide audience and sell well. The industry has consciously not targeted education for this reason. Those companies who have ventured into this area, have traditionally aimed at the younger age group. Knowing that their parents will buy what is perceived as an educational game. However, it takes only a few nanoseconds for a child to realize that most educational games are homework and not a game.
In recent times, game-based learning has gained the interest of many teachers. Commercial off-the-shelf game (cots) provide many of the lessons that are needed and can be assimilated into the existing curriculum. Sim City, Civilization, Carmen Sandiego are all successfully used in schools across the globe. However, as commercial game engine become available as open source, many small developers are now using these to create high quality education games. Schools and institutions have accepted games as a learning resource, as have the military and many industries and a training tool. What we need now is talented designers to create digital games that fit within the curriculum and achieve the required learning outcomes.
How: This course centers around a role play of a game development company. Each of you will work within small teams, and will take responsibility for a specific role. These will be detailed at the start of the course and will closely resemble a real commercial game company. Each of you will also function within the group and assist with the completion of the work. However, at times you will be asked to assume the role that you have been assigned. This maybe project leader or quality assurance manager. You will design an educational game of your choice, and please be creative when developing your concepts, and you will complete a concept document and design marketing material in order to “sell” your concept to a publisher – think of the lecturer as the publishing company that will fund your project. The concept document will include technical specifications, which you will need to research, as well as artwork and gameplay design. The concept must be feasible and be able to be created if funding and resource was provided. You will also need to prototype your idea and analyze the usability. You will be shown how to do this in another session. Above all, take this class seriously. This role-play is based closely upon what happens in the real world and how the process of development occurs in a game design company.
In summary, the Summer School will give designers and creative students insights and knowledge of educational game design e.g. creating educational games for the target group, embedding curricular topics and stealth learning, providing accurate information, consulting on one hand teachers and on the other hand the target group; asking the right questions and embedding these answers into the game. Aim of the Summer School is also to bring insight of game design industry and entrepreneurship.
This Summer School is for Students and Young Designers and will be held in Tampere, Finland, from 30th of August till 3rd of September in 2010. The summer school will tackle issues related to game design as well as how to embed curricular topics in the game design. The summer school (3 ECTS) will accommodate between 15 – 25 international students and game designers.
Further information has been posted here, including a budget for your transport and accommodation. The school and facilities are provided free of charge with the ENGAGE project. Contact us to get your name of the list on summerschool@engagelearning.eu and we will keep you informed.
This seems like a terrific opportunity. I wish I could afford to go. This would be a great learning curve for my company, Careersters – a web-based early career planner.