education for game design?

[kingkaius]

As a college student finishing up his undergraduate degree in film production, I'm wondering whether there are any programs/degrees which would allow for the academic study of rpg design and rpg theory.

As a related question, what degree would prepare me for a career that would allow for a reasonable quality of life and, at the same time, prepare me for rpg design?

The "day jobs" of all of the rpg designers I know of are writing or (video) game design.  Are there others that I'm overlooking?

[David Artman]

Well, I know of at least a few folks who make full-time livings organizing and running LARPs. It helps if your REALLY popular and can get a LOT of volunteers for Crew roles (hint: make it seem glamorous so there's a line out the door of folks who want the "promotion"; force everyone on Crew to hide how much work it is).

I suppose you could approach a graphic design school, with the hope of freelancing in game design specifically, but don't narrow yourself to books. Card games, board games, party games, computer games (and all of their associated web sites--all of them benefit from good design, and there's a LOT more jobs in "conventional" games than in RPG publishing.

Game theory IS a branch of math/economics/psychology that is something in which someone can master or get a doctorate, at many universities. It couldn't hurt on a resume, especially if you're looking to go corporate, not freelance or independent small-press. Conversely, it would not be hard for you to self-educate by doing a LOT of reading around game design sites on the web (this one is a solid start) and making and testing games and seeing what works and what doesn't first-hand.

Finally... go to Scandinavia. Socialist AND they have some grants for game design (they consider it an art, imagine that!). I'm only kind of joking.

[chance.thirteen]

On a similar topic, does anyone have recommendations on game design books? Theory, surveys, history, trends, whatever?

A very simple one is A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Interestingly enough, I myself have ended up combining editorial and layout work with game design. Works well if you're an indie designer who's going to want to know this stuff anyway.

[whiteknife]

I found this book very interesting. It's a free download here: http://highadventuregames.wordpress.com/2007/03/26/rpg-design-patterns/

[mjbauer]

I just got back into gaming and game design in the last few years and I've found that my graphic design degree is pretty well suited for it. I started going to school to get an English degree and switched when I was in my 3rd year to the graphic design department (which is a fine arts degree). I think it's pretty amazing how much studying English and design have prepared me for game design.

It's obvious why English is helpful, but maybe not graphic design, so I'll explain. A "good" graphic design program will teach a little bit from many different areas that are helpful when working on and publishing a game, like visual communication, information architecture, conceptual thinking, marketing, branding, and user experience. That is on top of learning the technical processes and computer programs needed to create books, PDFs, web sites and collateral.

By "good" I mean a program that is concerned with art over craft. Many graphic design programs are more of a technical school where they emphasize learning the processes more than the thinking behind effective design. A good graphic designer can think conceptually, organize information logically and present ideas effectively. All of which are really applicable to game design.

Sometimes a school attaches graphic design to the communication department, but at the school I went to graphic design was part of the visual arts so we took all the same core classes as the painters and sculptors, which was a bit intimidating, but really useful because I'm comfortable coming up with a limited amount of my own artwork and illustration for a my own games. I also know quite a few illustrators, industrial designers, photographers and other artists which is helpful when I decide that I want something done that I can't do myself.

I'm not saying this is the best or only path, just letting you know what I did and how it worked for me. Pursuing the Arts and Humanities in school was fun for me because I was interested in them, but my education really lacked in mathematics and statistics (which, at the time, I was glad, but no I'm regretting a bit). When it comes to figuring out probability I'm completely lost. I could also see going into psychology or the social sciences as being helpful to understand why people game and how they interact.

I don't think there is a wrong route, except to go into something that doesn't interest you. I think as long as you like what you are studying you will be able to apply it to game design in one way or another.

[HeTeleports]

On a similar topic, does anyone have recommendations on game design books? Theory, surveys, history, trends, whatever?

Surprisingly, you're in the middle of one of the best spots for discussing game design. A whole lot of material *should* be read here. Start with the Infamous Five.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=4444.0

Incidentally, I'm posting to find out whether Ron has formalized his theory yet (and if so, where we can buy a copy). The Infamous Five date back to 2002. It's been seven years. Much has changed. Where does GNS, Mainstream, Pervy/Vanilla and all the rest stand today?

[Ron Edwards]

I'm working on a list of materials for a Site Discussion thread. Stay tuned.

HeTeleports, your post veritably reeks of "former Forge denizen." Did you post here previously under another username?

Best, Ron

[Jason Morningstar]

I think lateral entry is the way to go, academically, although programs in ludology or game design (with a strong emphasis on computer-mediated games, since that is where the money is) abound.  But psychology, information science, cultural studies, all sorts of disciplines offer windows into gaming from different perspectives. I have no idea what a film production background brings to the table, but a field that logically follows on what you've already learned would be a place to start.  If you approach a Masters program with a clear idea what you want to explore, individual programs can probably give you a good idea whether they are a good fit or not.  If you ask. 

[Jonathan Walton]

I was looking into this for a while.

Most "game studies" programs in the US and elsewhere are focused on video game design or new media like ARGs.  There are a bunch of good ones, though, and several of them teach about analog games too, though mostly from the perspective of "historical game studies" or "intro to REAL game design."  The program at USC was among the best in the country for a while, though there are many others at this point and I'm not sure what the state of the field is right now.  The problem with planning your life around these is that game studies is a very new field (even newer than cultural studies) and it's not at all clear what the value of an academic game studies degree is right now.  While many degree programs seek to train students to be ready to work for big game companies (EA even financed a chair at USC, as I recall), lately many of them have been saying that graduates of academic programs are not necessarily more desirable or better prepared to work in the electronic games industry, where there are not many folks doing real design work and many, many more who are just punching in code.

Also, if you really do wanna focus on tabletop roleplaying, most game studies programs aren't what you want.  Jason's right that other fields would be better: cultural studies, communications studies, interdisciplinary study of ritual, discourse analysis, etc.  Those programs also vary widely but might be better suited, even though it's likely your advisers would have very little background in roleplaying, unless you study the occult and ritual theory with Chris over at BU or something.  Additionally, going with a more established discipline is probably a much better idea if you want long term job prospects, since you can always teach "Intro to Communications" in addition to your upper level seminar on game studies or whatever.  That said, when deciding to go to graduate school, you'll want to make sure that you're actually interested in the discipline you choose and, preferably, already have taken one or two courses in it, because much or what you end up studying and writing about will have very little connection to roleplaying.

Hope that helps.  If you have any specific questions, I'd be glad to help with those as well.

Academic texts on roleplaying (not just game studies):

- the annual Nordic larp books edited by Markus Montola and others (only some articles are directly about tabletop)
- the International Journal of Roleplaying, currently preparing its second volume (mixed)
- Second Person (limited)
- Design Patterns, already mentioned

Honestly, the answer is just that there aren't any really great academic studies of roleplaying that I know of.  It's unfortunate and hopefully we'll fix it some day.

[Mike Sugarbaker]

I would wager that you might be able to do an RPG-focused masters at one of the more academically-focused game studies programs - Georgia Tech might be a good bet. The right advisor would be willing to work with you on a curriculum (probably composted of everything J-Walt names, and more). You'd probably still have to do a lot of coursework relating to other game styles, but that'd only be helpful in my view.

Or hell, maybe there's something in Norway by now!

(As for leading a comfortable life thereafter, I'd say the famous advice for poets applies: "get a trade.")

[HeTeleports]

I'm working on a list of materials for a Site Discussion thread. Stay tuned.

HeTeleports, your post veritably reeks of "former Forge denizen." Did you post here previously under another username?

Best, Ron

That's about as big a compliment I can imagine getting.

I really don't remember logging in before, much less being a denizen. I believe I found this site less than three weeks ago. In 2008, I read short versions of the GNS essays as referenced on Wikipedia.org.

My name is Youssef (an Arabic name attached to a regular White guy), and other usernames I've used are WriterD and SpidermonkeyD -- but those were years ago. Are any of those usernames used?
Thanks,
-Youssef ("Be careful. He teleports.")

[kleenestar]

I'm a late-stage doctoral student, and by this time next year I expect to be a professor with a focus on RPG play (admittedly among other types of games).  So if you want to be working on RPGs in an academic context, I'm here to tell you that it's completely possible.  However, it will take a whole lot of determination, motivation and fast talking!

To make things easier on yourself, you'll want to choose an academic lens through which to approach your RPG interests.  Not only will it help you figure out what departments to apply to, it'll also help you explain to other people (like graduate school admission committees) exactly what is interesting about your work.  Are you interested in the way that people collaborate in fiction?  Create imaginary narrative universes?  Identify with characters?  Use sophisticated mathematical and logical analyses in-game?  Do you want to be observing play and writing about it?  Designing games and looking at their impact?  Inventing research studies to answer underlying questions about the field?  Reading philosophy and literary theory to synthesize new approaches?

If you can answer those two questions - what you want to look at, and how you want to look at it - you are way ahead of the game.

To illustrate, my own interests are in how people collaborate and improvise at a microgenetic level, and how those things are mediated by rules and by technology (I look at both face to face and online play).  I knew I wanted to be doing design, observing play, and creating research studies, but probably not doing too much coding or heavy-duty theory.  That's why I ended up in a joint program between a cognitive psychology department that had an excellent program in creativity studies, and a communications department.  It let me answer the kinds of questions I wanted to answer, while doing the kind of work from day-to-day that I thought was interesting.  For example, I just proposed a new course on narrative and games which requires all students to participate in a semester-long role-playing group as the "lab" component of the course.  I really hope it gets approved!!

Once you have your questions and/or your research methods narrowed down, I'd be happy to help you identify some excellent programs.  In many of them, people are already doing work on RPGs!  Of course, there's almost nowhere that you can work exclusively on RPGs without any kind of larger academic context.  Depending on your department, you'd be expected to be familiar with larger issues in game design, psychology, anthropology, literacy, etcetera.  However, the point of a doctoral program is to get you to the point where you can do original research within the context of your discipline, so all that would be necessary grounding for your own RPG questions.

As far as money goes, academia will not make you rich, but it does provide a lot of opportunities to do game design on someone else's dime.  For example, you can apply to grants for your research projects, as long as you can make the argument that you are doing something more important than just "making a neat game."  I just won a fellowship to look at the impact of different reward systems on player behavior, because my argument was that it's important for learning about what motivates people and how the reward system can get people paying attention to different parts of the game.  I'm designing a game, and then I'm using it to do a randomized controlled study across different versions of the game to see what happens.  That's the kind of thing you can get grants for, even here in the USA.  Again, narrow down your interests and I can help point you to funders!

Finally, I'll say something that will likely make me rather unpopular (which is a depressing thought, as this is my first post).  Don't mistake reading the Forge for doing the kind of academic research that will help you get into the academic side of games.  What, exactly, you're supposed to be reading will depend a lot on your answers to the questions I posed above.  However, it's a question of academic credibility.  The sources Jon Walton mentioned are all very good!  I'd also highly recommend Salen & Zimmerman's books (Rules of Play and The Game Design Reader), Angela Thomas's new book Youth Online, Shared Fantasy by Gary Allan Fine, and following the Terranova blog (focused on MMORPG, but full of smart people and great insights about role-playing).  You'll find a lot of stuff about role-playing listed under "new literacies," if that's any help.  I can also send you the syllabus from my game design course sequence, although the classes don't focus on role-playing games specifically.

You should try to set up an appointment to talk to someone who's doing this kind of research, either online or face to face.  (If you're around NYC I'd be happy to have coffee!)  Or you can talk to the people at some of the best academic game programs to see how open they'd be to RPG research.  Places to investigate should include the ETC at CMU, Georgia Tech, USC, University of Madison-Wisconsin, Columbia/Teachers College's EGGPLANT Lab, MIT's Media Lab and CMS programs, Savannah College of Art and Design, the GEL at Michigan State - and if there's any chance you'd end up overseas, don't miss Copenhagen and Tampere.

I hope that's helpful!  An academic career studying RPGs is totally possible - and, I can tell you from personal experience, a hell of a lot of fun.  Just don't get sidetracked by the dozens of other interesting questions you'll encounter every day, or you might end up with one too many research projects on your hands!  I can vouch for that too!

--Jess

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

I'm wondering whether there are any programs/degrees which would allow for the academic study of rpg design and rpg theory.

The great majority of people who are currently doing role-playing studies as professional or part-time academics are from three (rough) fields: media studies (including communications), computer sciences or education. But any field offering game studies or interaction studies is theoretically quite applicable: There are several sociologists and linguists studying rpgs and their design, for instance, and oddities like myself (studying larps within the field of library and information science.) As far as ready study programs go, though, I'd recommend the general game studies ones, if you're still on the undergraduate level.

As a related question, what degree would prepare me for a career that would allow for a reasonable quality of life and, at the same time, prepare me for rpg design?

If you won't be doing MMORPGs, anything that isn't exclusively devoted to rpg design. Doning tabletop rpgs just doesn't pay well enough, and for well-enough funded live games (take a look at the great book Pervasive Games: Theory and Design by Montola, Stenros & Waern for examples and inspiration) you need a lot of background credibility in design, and even those are rarely good enough in the long term. I suggest picking up a suitable field you'd be studying/working in regardless of the rpg angle, and then making sure the rpg design will support that field. The educational sciences people get increased professional qualifications, for example, as they design rpgs (or larps, or training simulations) for those purposes and publish them (and articles discussing the games). Make the design work for your main field, instead of looking primarily for a field which would immediately seem to support it.

[HeTeleports]

Anyone wanting a real challenge (in terms of getting a job doing a form of "RPG design") should try this.

Emergency/Professional Services Training Units

(a made-up name for the idea I'm explaining. If you can, take the name and run with it - it sounds good on grant writing. I've got no copyright interests)

Design a scenario (RPer talk: LARP) that tests new and old workers (players) for events that would occur on the job. Along with the design, though, you'd have to possibly cold-sell it to the right agencies.

The most immediate example is a LARP that the Department of Homeland Security ran in Metaline Falls, Wash., sometime last fall. About 20 humans (NPCs) acted out what would happen if the small town (about 140 residents) was hit with an air-born biochemical warfare agent (think nerve gas). The local emergency services and agents of Homeland Security (the PCs) responded to the dispatcher's emergency calls.
A 'judge' (the GM) graded each agency on its response, and local captains (smaller GMs) graded individual members (the PCs) on their responses. Apparently it went well; they avoided one situation where the high school would have been compromised.

These training scenarios are rare, the DHS spokesman said, because the material is so limited. They only have about three scenarios -- and many of the responders have heard or read about it. (Designers: read that last statement as a need for your services.)
I believe DHS contracted with a company to help run the show -- to the tune of $10,000 or so.
Local firefighting agencies would hire the same -- not to mention a police academy. Even further, private companies dealing with hazardous situations could hire a similar company to receive the training -- which can go to a safety certification of some kind.
(Imagine Boeing or Lockheed engineers going through a 'bomb-threat scenario' at the missile manufacturing sites. Imagine local political groups vetting future candidates through 'campaign obstacle scenarios'. Nuclear energy utility companies would probably pay a pretty penny for 'accident training certifications'.)