The Track

Often, I'm trying to break misconceptions about the industry. For students, prospective students, their families, peers and friends and family. There is an immediate "wow" factor when I explain what I do for a living to people I meet. Work that I share, personal or student work, is met with praise typically on a surface level. A deeper understanding of the content just isn't there sometimes. I wouldn't say it is anyone's fault, and there may be no way to escape it. The average gamer is 35 with 13 years of game playing experience, but just playing games doesn't mean you understand how or why they are created on a fundamental level. Too often we see complaints about developers in generalized or blanketed ways. We see feedback that is contradictory all the time. Players are tasked with learning and performing, can become frustrated, and can then dismiss entire mechanics because it doesn't fit that mold that contextualizes their way. Visit a game's community forum or subreddit and you'll see numerous suggestions, requests for changes and perspectives and what is right and what is wrong. I think this mentality is mirrored in the way people can choose to view the medium.

I have no Architectural training or education. I like being in buildings. I'm in them all the time. I would not expect to know how to make a house just because I am in one, even if I had a really, really, really good idea for one.

As a tenure-track Assistant Professor I'm expected to meet the expectations of an institution's tenure standards. The criteria includes teaching, service responsibilities and research. Teaching and service is straightforward and simply universal, albeit with relevant perspectives and methodologies, regardless of the discipline. The research portion is typically writing/expansion of knowledge-oriented, but how does that fit in the world of game development considering the capabilities of the medium? Put simply, the creation of games is an expansion of knowledge. Whether you are evolving what has been or revolutionizing what could be, you are creating an experience that has the potential to introduce simple, complex and very, very new concepts to the user in a way nothing else can.

While there are tenured Faculty in this realm, precedents are not common. I, for one, have been knowingly and unknowingly following in the writing, developing and "make an educational development platform for students" shoes of Tracy Fullerton, though they are incredibly difficult to fill. Given these misconceptions, how can I help to define what should be expected of an academic in the realm of game development? Can I help in breaking down these walls with my research, or is my role in educating students the key in helping to raise awareness by sharing these perspectives, offering insight and letting them discover notgames, non-professional games and serious games?