Culture Clash

(April 2005)

They Shoot Aliens, Don't They?

Anyone who attended the Quality of Life Summit at GDC and heard Steve McConnell's amazing keynote can take the month off; you've already seen proof that non-game-developers may have something of value to share. Gaming is hardly the only industry reluctant to listen to outsider views. Corporate xenophobia is very common. But what with the major hurdles the business has to jump in the next few years – quality of life, diversity, social issues, censorship and so on – the input of those who aren't explicitly connected to games might be helpful. The views of outsiders may help us solve the major problems facing the industry, problems discussed at the IGDA's "Developers' Rant" to a howlingly appreciative crowd at GDC. Moreover, they might assist with the acceptance issues that currently plague us.

A huge percentage of this medium's creative product is devoted to unusual or exciting ways to kill aliens; maybe that's why the business doesn't like input from the outside. Alternatively, maybe some developers and publishers are so hung up on their own self-righteous sense of inflated worth that they can't conceive of the possibility that there are people out there who might know something they do not. It sometimes seems like developers would smirkingly dismiss Einstein's theories because he never made a game. The fact is other industries have benefited from setting aside their defensiveness about external ideas. Manufacturing, education and even government apply things like Six Sigma – developed for the engineering community – to assess and enhance quality. It's a great example of input from a seemingly unrelated outside source improving practices in all kinds of environments. The same can happen here.

This business operates as a closed system and is very quick to demean those it views as outsiders. Academics run into this all the time. That's another place where non-industry people can be of enormous use to developers. Outside academia can perform research that no studio has the time or money for – Ted Castronova and Dmitri Williams said as much at a panel on the role of academia in gaming. Ernest Adams points out the same thing. Even if developers don't like the idea of a game academia they'd be crazy to say no to free R&D.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has seen the enormous potential of games as learning tools, largely because Jim Gee and Clark Aldrich – neither of whom work in the industry – have made such a strong case for them. This isn't meant to say “be nice to academics,” that's up to you; the point is that these guys are bringing money, work, and recognition to the industry from a source that wouldn't have otherwise been interested. It rather elegantly disproves the rude claim made by many developers that outsiders cannot bring tangible value to the biz. It might be worth the time to seek out other potential sources of support and revenue from without, if only as a networking exercise. Inviting outsiders to talk at events like GDC has already proven educational and beneficial – look at the Serious Games Summit.

There's also the possibility that marginally related exterior topics would help developers make better games, if they'd just get over themselves and listen. Designers, for example, would benefit hugely from working with behavioral psychologists, who are adept at machining an experience for longevity and recidivism. Games, still a fledgling medium, can blaze their own creative trail or learn from others. It's up to us to develop a grammar and ruleset for interactivity, but the other stuff – narrative, theme, character development and so on – is already there. No point in reinventing the creative wheel.

Then there is acceptance. The industry is doing pretty well fighting the “video games are evil” squawk, but we've still got image problems. After a period of relative quiet, we get the Mortal Kombat murder (which to me says more about how boring Latvia must be than about the ill effects of games), comments on drug use, and the claim that a line doodle indicts video games, not a psychotic and bullied teen, as the culprit in a school shooting. The industry responds to these attacks as best it can, but a lot of what we do sounds inherently defensive because it comes from inside.

The interesting incongruity here is that press like that, which makes games look bad, also comes from outsiders – inside the industry, we know that kids who kill other kids using MK moves aren't under the control of Dr. Robotnik, they're stupid and unhinged. But apologists for games will have much more impact if they're not inextricably linked to the business. An opinion is naturally suspect when rendered by someone with a vested interest in the outcome; that's why no one listens to Jack Thompson. People like Gerard Jones, armed with impartial research and separated from the money of the business, do us a lot of good.

We don't want to just throw the doors open and welcome everyone with a keyboard and an opinion; that would be going too far. But the developer community should think about listening more closely to those who consume their product and experts who want to help make it better. There's knowledge out there we could tap. In the e-Learning business, it is called “Corporate Wisdom” – a shared, collective pool of knowledge retained by gatekeeper Subject Matter Experts. Just as SMEs in games could help other industries, SMEs from outside could help games.

It wouldn't be a death sentence to retain the industry's xenophobia, just impractical. Sniping at the opinion of outsiders is something developers like to do, but it's a bad idea. McConnell, who proved in three slides that we could make games in months instead of years, for thousands instead of millions, with fewer bugs and shorter work hours, is a prime example of how much we could benefit from some outside wisdom – and how much the outside might in turn benefit from ours.