1-milestone. Part 3.1: Why were the game designers robbed of their title?
Finally, the part of this blog that I looked forward to most. And while I thought to start this part of discussing the game designers a bit differently, the fates decided otherwise. Someone might have mentioned this in our designer class discussions, but I have no memory of this. Perhaps I will make a fool out of myself, but I feel that this is an important observation which needs to be made before the start of the discussion of “Who are the game designers?”
I have a vivid memory of sitting at the first lesson of my program, which was Bachelor in Game Design. And the teacher (Hi, Adam!) asked us for the reason as to why we were there. And I remember that I said that I didn’t know the exact reason. That I had little idea as to what I was getting into. What I knew at that moment was that I wanted to study game design. I wasn’t even sure what game design meant, only that it had something to do with the games. And I wasn’t a programmer or an artist, for sure. I was reluctant to take up the burden of managing people. And there was the 4th option, which was something called just Game Design, so I took it. I took it without knowing what it actually was in reality. Do I know what that means now? Yes. Did my teacher know who we were supposed to be? I believe so. Even our substitute teacher who had workshops with us occasionally seemed to know what we were.
So, why didn’t I know back then? It is unlikely to think that I could have misinterpreted the descriptions of the course. Not after dealing with these types of text for 4-5 years at Stockholm University. Ignoring the usual academic mumbo-jumbo, there is, in fact, a glaring issue in the pattern of the course descriptions. It is obvious that those who came into Bachelor in Game Design PERIOD were supposed to fill in a role in the production groups. A title. The role and the title of the game designer. And yet, nowhere does it explicitly state who we supposed to be…
Suffice to say that the Swedish version is the same.
Ok, let’s see where to begin untangling this mess… The course description never actually calls us for what we are – game designers. Could it be that by calling one branch “game designers” it breaks the main title of the three other branches? Yet this was what caused the confusion in the first place among the students: Why are those guys studying more game design? Aren’t we all game designers?
One could parry the absence of the word “specialises” in the short description in two ways:
You could claim that we need to get the speciality through our free courses. But this is bullshit. I intend to spend my points from languages as my free courses. This won’t make me into a specialist in languages, this will make me into a game designer with the sub-type of languages or whatever…?
So, perhaps this is because of those 6 different skills in the long description? I am sure that a coder/artist/manager can name up to 6 separate skills that are taught in their line of work, but you don’t see them getting robbed of their titles.
So, could this be that we are just victims of the academic rhetoric in the description of the courses? I know how idiotic it could get sometimes, but this is just too much. If this is the case then I will get seriously upset…
So, only after a year of studies can I conclude that I am a game designer in my title. And a lot of us, who were working on the games were in fact NOT game designers, but something else. Let’s delve into why an artist, a programmer and most certainly a producer aren’t game designers. Well, mostly not game designers.
lostingame.design 