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s or maybe you re given a real honest to goodness game development task in your preferred field and at that point you should be wondering why the company is getting away with paying you so much less than the other people who are doing the same work in the cubicles next to you this subject has come up a bit lately because of the somewhat common game industry practice of unpaid internships there are some problems here in some cases they are actually illegal the criteria vary from place to place so companies doing this would do well to consult a lawyer even if it is technically legal in one particular case there is the potential for others to see the practice as exploitative is it actually exploitative in my experience no the studios i ve seen that offer them tend to be very up front about the fact to any potential interns for exceptional interns the companies do usually pay them as long as they don t go parading it about the other interns because they are getting free cheap labor they re willing to work around the intern s schedule it s not a 40 hour work week so much as show up whenever you want choose your own hours it s hard for me to call this exploitative certainly not on the order of third world child labor sweatshops or anything this is particularly relevant for schools that have game dev programs as most of them encourage their students to get internships some schools actually require that students have a documented internship for graduation and others offer course credit for internships paid or not in particular this means schools need to do some due diligence be aware of the labor laws in your area i don t know if a school could get in legal trouble for deliberately steering its students towards illegal work but i wouldn t want to chance it keep up with local companies know which ones offer internships if any of them offer internships that are technically illegal it would be a great opportunity to gently notify them of this fact for their benefit so they can protect themselves it s probably just a matter of the studio not being aware educate your career center professors and students for students especially make sure they understand the issues at stake as they choose a place to work at educators can certainly be part of the process of making sure this all happens posted by ian schreiber at 10 40 am 6 comments labels game industry wednesday march 31 2010 game design tech tree version 0 1 beta i put this together today and thought i d share i ve attempted to list every major skill or task that falls under the broad field of game design i then tried to create a kind of progression based on which skills are desired prerequisites before learning or performing others this is very much a work in progress i haven t even added any icons yet so your comments are welcome click on the image for a large version since this is mostly a graphical version of notes to myself some explanations might be required i m not sure how much is obvious to the casual observer however so rather than write a lengthy essay explaining every last detail i ll simply answer any questions you have in the comments here enjoy posted by ian schreiber at 7 45 pm 4 comments labels game design curriculum topic for discussion monday march 29 2010 stop saying they don t teach you this in school twice in the past week i ve run into a person that said as part of their presentation something like this is the stuff they don t teach you in school in both cases this was part of a presentation given at a school does anyone else see the irony here okay in some cases a person is saying this and they re not at a school but you know what if that person is saying anything that s really useful before too long educators are going to notice and we ll incorporate it into our curricula and now it will be something taught in school the very pronouncement that something isn t taught in school is self defeating if it were just a matter of technical details i d leave it at that but there is something more insidious going on here when someone makes this kind of statement the implication is that there are important things you don t learn in a traditional classroom setting this may be true but why the primary reason is that you get out of your education what you put in and that some things only come with experience so students should stop waiting for their professors to spoon feed them everything they need and go out there and make learning a passion and learn this stuff on their own however all too often i think students take away an entirely different message school is useless your teachers are lying to you the only real thing that matters is getting a piece of paper feel free to ignore all of your course content what it takes to succeed is not hard work but rather knowing a few key secrets that take no effort this attitude is incredibly damaging especially to professors like me who are bringing their own real world experience into the classroom setting and actually teaching the things that students aren t supposed to learn in school posted by ian schreiber at 10 20 am 4 comments labels shame on you thursday march 11 2010 game jams in the classroom just talked at gdc yesterday for a whole five minutes on applying global game jam in the classroom in five non obvious ways you know other than get students to participate i think i was talking too fast for anyone to actually take notes so here is the gist 1 have students read post mortems and do a cumulative analysis the post mortem is a tradition in the game industry after a project is released a reflection on what went right and what went wrong in the process or as i put it figuring out why your game sucked as badly as it did you can find these on gamasutra and in game developer magazine and you can even see student post mortems on game career guide and to start with reading these is valuable for students so that they can see the patterns and get a feel for the most common pitfalls and dangers of game development beyond this though it s instructive to have students search for game jam post mortems these are unofficial and tend to be on individual participants blogs so you have to do some digging to find them the interesting thing is that a lot of themes in industry post mortems on 5 year aaa projects also appear in game jam post mortems scope control pipeline problems engine difficulties team communication etc so a lot of the same lessons apply on how to develop a game whether the game takes 2 days or 10 years 2 game analysis i teach a class called game criticism and analysis sort of like art criticism or film criticism but with games the goal is to be able to play games and analyze them in a way that s a little more sophisticated than it s good or it sucks normally analyzing a full game is really hard in a class because many games are very long to play 80 hours of gameplay is a common marketing tactic and even shorter games are still 8 to 10 hours which is hard to justify if you want students to analyze a new game each week game jam games offer a solution because they are made in a short period of time they tend to play quickly and have relatively simple systems lending them to play in class or as homework without taking too much time 3 minimum bar for student projects for capstone and other project based courses where students work individually or on teams to make complete games over an academic term or several game jam games provide a realistic achievable yardstick to measure project quality i mean these games were made in 2 days so your students should be able to do at least as well with 15 weeks the best most clever game jam games can be used as a source of inspiration for students that they should be able to do better with so much more time they can be used as a grading rubric letting students know the quality level you expect and informing the teacher about this as well 4 achievements we tried some new things at global game jam this year among them xbox live style achievements totally optional extra challenges to allow experienced developers to really push their boundaries it allowed people to seek their own level of challenge and comfort i see no reason similar things can t be implemented in most class assignments we already offer extra credit but achievement unlocked sounds so much more fun you can offer extra points or you can simply make it available for the purpose of bragging rights 5 fix a broken game as you might imagine with only 48 hours some games don t actually work maybe the team overscoped and had to make drastic cuts at the end or maybe the programmer stayed up a little too late and wrote some terribly insane code at 3am and now the entire thing is a mess the whole project team would like nothing better than to sweep the whole thing under the rug and pretend it never happened and hopefully take away some life lessons about how to not make games additionally there is often a disconnect between classes where students typically start with a blank slate and write a complete simple program from scratch and industry where you are almost always working with someone else s pre written code not even counting the use of game engines luckily one of the rules for global game jam is that everyone in theory at least has to submit their complete game including source code working or not this suggests an interesting assignment find a game that has the source code posted that doesn t actually run and assign a programming team to fix it while staying as close as possible to the original design intent your students will hate you they will complain that the people writing this code were horrible programmers they will complain that the code is a mess and that they just want to rewrite it all from scratch they will probably use a lot more profanity than you are used to hearing from them in other words they will start to sound a lot more like professional game programmers posted by ian schreiber at 11 17 am 5 comments labels designing class assignments game industry game jam gdc 2010 public speaking student projects thursday march 04 2010 games at conferences as i m going to gdc next week it occurs to me that one of the things i m known for in my small circle of colleagues is that i m the guy who brings the board games video game developers generally like to play board games and i happen to have a sizeable collection so this is a win win playing games at conferences is different from playing them at say a local game club the social dynamics physical setting and time availability are constraints on the kinds of games that people are most likely to enjoy let us take gdc as an example here are some considerations i m flying in so i have limited space in my baggage especially if i want to leave any room to take back some swag this favors games that are small and portable card games but even some board games that come in big boxes if i can remove the bits from the box put them in plastic bags and have them take up a lot less space most venues are noisy so it s better if games are either well known i don t have to explain the rules or simple i can explain the rules quickly without blowing out my voice this also unfortunately reduces the value of games where players have to speak a lot e g those games that focus on trading diplomacy or negotiation mechanics gdc is crowded and every ten seconds one of the people at the table is going to turn around see an old friend and have to go off and say hi games that are short like five minutes or less are good here as are those rare games that allow free entry and exit of players without screwing up everyone else ironically games that have lots of player downtime can work well here it lets players socialize with non players when it s not their turn table space is plentiful at the conference but not so much at parties some board games that use a lot of space are fine at breakfast but i also need to bring a few games that are a little more compact for the nightlife also most nighttime activities involve drinks so waterproof games are a plus as are games that can be played competently while drunk number of players is a consideration games that only support 2 or 4 players or those that work best with a specific number are not as good as those with wide ranges 2 to 8 players you never know exactly how many people you ll have avoid games with play times more than 30 or 45 minutes someone will inevitably have to go to a session or get called away on business games that have some kind of visual wow factor are nice because they act as an attention grabber for anyone walking past this gives everyone at the table the opportunity to network if only by answering the question oh what is that game over and over hey any excuse to get a business card note that board games with all the bits crammed into a plastic bag aren t so appealing at the table this year i ll experiment with printing out a sheet with the game box artwork to stick in the bag to make it look nicer know the audience three games in particular seem to be loved by a disproportionate number of game developers i know family business which i never have to bring because someone else inevitably does pandemic everyone seems to love it but no one owns it making it an obvious choice for me to cart along and dominion sadly disqualified because it doesn t travel well though i may attempt to stuff the basic set into an old box i used to use for magic cards game developers particularly designers have discriminating tastes so i try to bring games that showcase some kind of unique mechanic if i can introduce other designers to new mechanics this buys me street cred given all of this what games will i bring this year i won t know for sure until i pack but here are some likely candidates incan gold supports 3 8 players has a small game box the rules are ridiculously simple but still engaging plays in five rounds with each round taking only a couple minutes and players can theoretically leave in between rounds without screwing up the other players pandemic with the expansion supports 2 5 players plays in about 45 minutes pushing the upper limit for a game at breakfast but this game sets the gold standard for pure coop play in a board game something that is notoriously hard to do hey that s my fish serves 2 4 small box the rules can be explained in less than a minute and play lasts for about five minutes delightful experience in such a short time and it has these ridiculously cute penguin pieces notre dame for 3 5 players takes about 45 minutes and is about as complex and strategic as i dare to bring that said it has some absolutely brilliant mechanics and is obscure enough that a lot of people still haven t played it yet the box it comes in is large but it s mostly empty space so it collapses nicely brawl this real time card game takes about a minute to explain and another minute to play theoretically supports multiplayer but works best with 2 that said the g...