Culture Clash

(May 2008)

Graduation Day

How students are leading innovation

I think everyone assumed, in a general sort of way, that Portal would be good; it was, after all, from Valve. But I don't think anyone expected it to cream everything else. 2007 gave us Bioshock, World in Conflict, Mass Effect, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Uncharted, Call of Duty 4… games so good it's almost unimaginable that we saw them in the same twelve-month span. Portal flattened them all; even its own Orange Box co-residents. And it did so in part because it was made by people who'd received proper education on how to make good games. Valve's ingestion of the DigiPen team that created Narbacular Drop had a lot to do with Portal's sparkliness, and as more and more grads get into the workforce, we can realistically expect similar results from them – especially those paired with outstanding studios that let them take certain risks.

Of course, just because game studies grads made Portal and Portal was swell doesn't mean that every game will be transcendent once the majority of developers have been schooled in the craft. There are terrible movies despite the fact that we've had a century of film school, and there will always be derivative crapgasms of the Hellgate London ilk. The schools aren't perfect and the student body isn't either. But the increased flow of game studies grads into the development workforce will certainly encourage a new burst of innovation.

As we know, many indie and student projects – Aquaria, Fl0w, Love, Crayon Physics, Blueberry Garden – are profoundly innovative. Even the most closeminded can't ignore the fact that people are paying attention to these games because they are different, and gaming needs more of that. Publishers and mainstream developers are notoriously risk-averse. But risk, like innovation, comes in a variety of flavors. Risk can lead to great success, if it's well managed and understood. Trying something new doesn't always work, but individuals who have been trained in what makes games good are more likely to try successful avenues. Graduates of well-designed game studies curricula will contribute better games, will contribute to innovation, and the medium will improve because of it. Not only will they encourage a cultural change at the developer and publisher level, but their formal education will result in more effective “like Halo, but” games as well.

Because we can't say that emulation of success automatically means an anti-innovation stance. Students and schools should, to a certain degree, copy success stories as a way of learning how to make their own. The realities of the industry demonstrate compellingly that there needs to be room for different types of innovation. But if all you do is copy what's already been done – and some schools encourage exactly that – you're doing a disservice to the student.

Does Halo 3 have more inherent worth than Okami simply because the former sold a bazillion copies while the latter sold like eight? Economically, yes. Halo 3 is mediocre at best, and probably the least innovative game in the world, but it made money. Okami did not. So while schools should encourage some level of emulation so as to learn the parameters of successful game development, they are also responsible for drawing a line somewhere, so as to encourage the development of original creative: of innovation across all types of game design, from the pedestrian to the outlandish. Schools are really where we should study innovation as a concept and determine what types work and what don't. Because if unstudied, “innovation” can lead us in what's arguably the wrong direction.

I have nothing against studios like Tale of Tales, which has rightly been accused of having “an ongoing problem with fun.” Neither The Graveyard nor The Endless Forest is fun. Actually they're both kind of annoying. While I encourage the little studio to continue its experiments in noncomformist game design, I'd rather not see Tale of Tales games dominating the shelves at Best Buy. Similarly, I can't say anything about Ice-Pick Lodge's Pathologic that hasn't already been said, and better than I could do it anyway. Pathologic is a very important, innovative game, and a very broken one. Only those benign to the point of self-deception can claim it's anything but a mangled could-have-been. And while I'm eager to see what the studio does with the upcoming Tension now that its talent's been recognized, I wouldn't want to see Ice-Pick games dominating shelves at Best Buy either.

The truth is that innovation, which will flow from academia, is a complex thing that we don't yet fully understand in the context of game development. Derivative, copycat games are important, if only because consumers focus on such titles, unaware of what they're missing. But you need a certain level of innovation there as well to keep the creative field fertile. The question is what kind. Every art form requires trailblazers or it will stagnate, and the next generation of trailblazers are going to come out of educational programs because gaming is now so complex, and the art of making a profound one is so intricate, that you'll likely need an education to manage it.

Accredited institutions are dropping the ball even as they fertilize the field. There remains an unforgivable deficit of instruction on history, theory and criticism – the philosophical underpinnings of game design. This'll come back to bite us, but schools have proven shamefully resistant to treating game studies as a humanity rather than a technical discipline. In addition to negatively impacting students, the absence of nontechnical education means there is no real source for true criticism of games. As Greg Costikyan points out, criticism is necessary for the validation of an art form, and it tends to come from the university. But since schools foolishly don't teach it , they're also not producing it. If we could correct this one glaring omission in the evolving curriculum for game development, we might further understand what it is that makes the greats so great.