IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 48

Deconstructing games and thinking about them
critically is also important, especially since many
students approach the topic from the point of view
of a rabid fan.
Totten notes that he’s far from alone in his
efforts to bring a design-school teaching method
to the field; the strategy has been gaining
a lot of traction lately. Indeed, one talk at the Game
Developer’s Conference in San Francisco last
March made an elegant case for academic programs
to adopt an architectural-education model.
It makes sense, given the numerous
parallels between professional practices.
“In gaming, as in design, there are
different structures and team sizes,
and the creative-development processes
are also similar: It’s a lot of iteration
and testing,” says Totten. “In our case,
it’s handing somebody a game prototype
to play, asking them a ton of questions
about how things worked and made
them feel, and then evolving the design
in response.”
As game development comes into
its own as a design discipline, many
institutions are better integrating
technical and artistic sides of the
medium. Universities often have two
game departments, one embedded
in computer science that emphasizes
coding and programming, and the
other sometimes aligned with
communication, graphics, or media
studies. (In that way, the school of
study is not unlike film, which is
generally bifurcated into theory and
production programs.) Administrators
and professors are revisiting this
balkanization, bringing together
departments and/or embarking
on more robust collaborations.

A spirited dialogue between gaming and other
design departments can elevate both disciplines
to new heights. One example is a joint effort
initiated by the professional architecture program
and the interactive design and game development
department at Savannah College of Art and
Design. A group of students and faculty from both
disciplines are taking part in a three-semester
special-topics course devoted to developing an
interactive game that simulates the architectural
process, allowing students to, in essence, “play”
the profession and make real-time decisions—
and discover the consequences of their actions.
Spearheading the project is Greg Hall, PhD,
chair of the professional architecture program,
with architecture professors Carole Pacheco
and Matthew Dudzik and interactive-design
and game-development professor Aram Cookson.
Hall explains that the game is not a virtual
environment but a role-playing exercise.“It’s akin
to a flight simulator, a game used to let people
practice skills, even to fail, without the usual
attendant risk,” he says. “We’re presenting the
situations, artifacts, and evidence of professional
practice, developing challenging problems
that depict the common issues architects face”—
from interacting with clients and subcontractors
to scheduling.
Hall and his colleagues—who won a $40,000
NCARB award to develop the novel teaching
tool—chose to apply gaming to the professional
practice course, which they felt had the most
potential to benefit from being made more
engaging and “real life.” “When graduates enter
the field, they’re hit with the harsh fact that, unlike
their academic experience, design is such a small
percentage of their time, energy, and certainly
their satisfaction,” says Hall. The game is conceived
to help students understand the broader context
of design as a creative process and not just
a form-making exercise. “Putting teams together,
addressing problems creatively, negotiating with
a client—those tasks can be incredibly rewarding
if approached with a strong background,” Hall
continues. “We want students to realize that being
engaged in the full process is essential to the
practice; otherwise, they’ll be delegating a huge
responsibility to someone else, which puts
them in a position of less control and, ultimately,
less potential to develop their concept.”
For students in the course—many of them gaming
enthusiasts inured to violence and, heck, blowing
things up—the project as a 180-degree switch.
“The traditional gaming platform and organization
structure will lead to the opposite outcome,
one based on negotiation and creation rather than
destruction and confrontation,” says Hall. Just

48



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013

IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013
IIDA Post-It initiative
Contents
Contributors
From IIDA
Behind the Issue
IIDA News
Design Dialogue
The Showroom of the Future
Working It
Hire Resolution
Get Your Game On
Design Decoded
Behind the Design
Viewpoints
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Cover2
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - IIDA Post-It initiative
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 2
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Contents
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 4
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 5
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Contributors
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 7
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - From IIDA
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 9
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Behind the Issue
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 11
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - IIDA News
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 13
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 14
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 15
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 16
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 17
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Design Dialogue
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 19
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 20
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 21
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 22
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 23
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - The Showroom of the Future
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 25
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 26
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 27
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Working It
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 29
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 30
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 31
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 32
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 33
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 34
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 35
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 36
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 37
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 38
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 39
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Hire Resolution
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 41
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 42
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 43
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 44
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 45
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Get Your Game On
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 47
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 48
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 49
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 50
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 51
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Design Decoded
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 53
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 54
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Behind the Design
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Viewpoints
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Cover3
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - Cover4
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