Mayor - AI planning system that played Sim City.

Art of Computer Game Design (Chris Crawford)

EduCom -> Game Studies Curriculum. 

Education saw big developers as “bad” and small developers were “good”, and no one was solving the problems could solve.  Companies saw professors as “bad” (greedy/slow/politics) and students as “good” (fresh/new/moldable).

But both education and business do both care about money, ideas, time.  Scheduling conflicts are a big problem. 

Shared audience.  Collage students go to university, and play lots of games. 

Edu strengths: long view, experimentation, diversity, failure is “free” (encourages trying new things).

Biz strengths: good at shipping/finishing things, reach markets and create fans, supports customers, sustain relationships.

Lessons learned:

•     studies: scope & finishing - essential
  
•     studio: new is possible, but new is fragile

Successes:  Portal & Flow are both student projects.  Indie games are blossoming.

Respect the power that freedom students have is powerful.  But that freedom needs to be managed by education, business can’t afford to let students make massive changes.

Trust is difficult, and integration is complex.

Some ideas:

• collaboration studies: group size, leadership choice, project choice, project success.

• game interest - hard to make anything outside the common interest
  
• game ideas - scope issues
  
• prior relationships - skill gaps
  
• random selection - investment issues (motivation about the project)
  
• self selected leader - control issues / personality clash
  
• beauty pageant (election) - balance issues (but usually does best)
  

“And indifferent team cannot create a joyful or meaningful product of experience”   

Collaboration research.  Flexible partnerships.

Study of design tools, how design drives tools.  Design studies, developing vocabulary, metrics, patterns in design, etc.

Students are used being graded (praised).  Lack of that crushes graduates spirits.  Saying good job keeps them productive.  Conversely, professors should avoid creating ego monsters by over rewarding talented students.