Living the Dream or Surviving the Nightmare: Making Commercial Indie Games as a Professor

foreign [Music] hey everyone Welcome to our panel about making commercial Indie Games as a professor in this session we're going to hear the stories of four professors slash game designers for brave souls who decided in fact possible and maybe even a good idea to mix this volatile combination of demanding professional roles for daring adventurers who looked academic tenure criteria bed in the eye and asked themselves can I please have some game industry style crunch with that so it's a bold proposition if there ever was one but clearly it's also a meaningful one after all As game designers aren't we all a little bit a mad scientist eager to throw away the shackles of commercial demands in exchange for unbridled academic freedom which brings us to the big dramatic

question that we are going to address today game design Academia is it living the dream or is it surviving a nightmare well let's find out about that now before we go to right now it's time for introductions now Michael I'm about to start a new position at Northeastern University but for the past eight years I have held a joint position between the College of Education and the department of emerging technology and design and business at Miami University of Ohio where a few years ago I got my tenure which is the key a key element of Miami being that it's an R2 which means that they have high research activity and tenure criteria are substantial but they also have a significant teaching load so my scholarship is about games and aging and my latest project is called brukle it's a horror game based on the authentic memories of my at the time 92 year old grandmother that has told two players in her own voice so that's me our next panelist is Chris

hi uh my name is Chris Totten I am an assistant professor of game design at Kent State University uh I'm also the program coordinator of our animation game design or AGD program uh so I have my own indie game Studio pie for breakfast um my 10-year home is on Kent State's Tuscarawas campus in our College of applied and Technical studies and I teach classes uh in our program at three of the campuses within the Kent State system you know I've done my academic stuff includes you know writing books about game design and level design I co-founded the Smithsonian American Art Museum arcade but I'm here to talk about my games through pie for breakfast the first of which is La Mancha which is a tabletop storytelling game based on Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote uh the game was successfully funded on Kickstarter in November of 2018 and released

commercially in the spring of the fall of 2019 and my Studio's current project is a game called Little Nemo and the nightmare fiends uh which is done in collaboration with another another Indie Studio pixel please and based on the work of Animation Pioneer Windsor McKay it was just funded successfully in Kickstarter back in March of this year and is currently in development for PC and switch I think I'll just jump in there yeah go ahead all right hi everyone I'm Tracy Fullerton I am a professor and also director emeritus of the USC games program at the University of Southern California also I hold the Electronic Arts endowed chair in interactive media uh and I am the director of the game Innovation lab which is my research group at USC my tenure home which was awarded way back

in 2008 um is within the interactive media and games division of the school of cinematic Arts um and so that is one of the two major schools at USC that make up the collaborative you across campus USC games program today I'm here to talk about um my games that I've released commercially through my work at the game Innovation lab so uh in 2017 I released Walden a game which is a six hour long open world translation of Henry David thoreau's Walden or life in the woods and so this game was first released on ichio and then um on PlayStation and steam and by the time of this viewing should have been released on Xbox so you can check that out um along with my earlier game the the night Journey which was a collaboration with the media artist Bill Viola um it was these were two of the first

four games released through the USC games publishing label so this is a publishing label that we have through the program that offers opportunities for students faculty and Innovative independent designers to have their non-traditional games released to the marketplace we think of it as you know something like a oh you would have a publishing label through a university this is a publishing games label through through our University so I'll pass it to Dave looking forward to having a discussion today thanks Tracy hi everybody my name is Dave Beck uh I am a full professor at the University of wisconsin-stout and within the School of Art and Design I'm the founding director for the game design program at Stout as well I'm actually now more in the directory role for the school as well as an upper Administration I'm taking I'm actually in now a one-year interim position as associate Provost for the campus so I'm really looking forward to to applying

some of my game design background to new types of systems across the entire campus my background is really pure in pure art lots of modeling animation uh World building the two games I'm probably going to be talking about the most today are tombow it's an interactive essentially an interactive film that has elements of history and environmentalism focused around a river on kind of in the Upper Midwest uh and I spent a number of years just working on that as a solo artist and designer for the game uh creating that and releasing it uh as that interactive experience on Steam and itch and then I'll also uh hopefully talk a little bit about distilled as well my current project uh as of right now this presentation that you're watching uh this is on Kickstarter uh as we speak and I've been working on this over the last couple years this actually started as a project in Scotland where I was doing quite a lot of research um I ended up deciding to create a board game so kind of jumping between those

different worlds much like Chris had mentioned as well so that's me and uh again I'm really excited to be here to talk talk with everybody today and I'm going to hand it back to you Bob yeah awesome that's excellent then as you can tell we had a lot of fun preparing for this session and sharing our stories as academic game development Journeys obviously buying us together and as we were sharing these uh well for lack of a better word War Stories We quickly realized that we needed a structure to keep ourselves on track and to avoid two lengthy tangents during the session so um as we're all professors we ended up making a diagram that they've turned into a wonderful illustration so as we pull it up here in a nutshell being an academic game developer puts you in between the field and Academia so ideally there's a strong exchange with the field as you introduce it within the university structure and your program and we identified these six key elements

in doing this which we will be used to drive our discussion today however before we do that we should probably discuss the big elephant in the room why on Earth would somebody want to do this you know we could we could all be indie game developers making games or professors writing papers about game design and make life a bit easier on ourselves right so why did we decide to do this guys well I can jump in I'll jump in because I I think I might have started um pretty earlier uh um you know for me one of the reasons to go to Academia coming out of industry was that I had seen the model of other art forms where people had done really truly experimental work um you know new genre defining work um within the confines of the University within sort of um you know a place where new ideas and taking risk was valuable right sometimes

that's not true in a purely commercial setting um and even in Indie work in the Arts it's very difficult to be truly experimental so you know one of my motivations for going to Academia and starting my research lab was that I wanted to make things that were outside the Norms of um you know what you could experiment with you know sort of on the edges of the game industry I want to go into full experimentation mode so that was one of my motivations so I don't think I realize it would be as hard I as it has been um but um but it was one of my core motivations for even going to USC in the first place yeah I think what the way it worked for me was was somewhat similar because for me it was also about I just want to you know I just want to be able to make the games that I want to make I want to experiment and push things as much as I can as an artist rather than having to be commercially dependent on whatever I end up making and I think for me that's

the biggest especially on tenure track once you've got your tenure sorted out and that's something I'm sure we'll discuss later on as well but once that sorted out it gives you a lot of freedom in some extent maybe not I mean what are your experiences with that guys um I I'm similar background uh my background is in you know architecture and the Arts and and when I was in school you know we had um professors even operating their own firms within the School of Architecture and and doing both industry work and academic work so this is something that is very familiar to me um I've always thought that game development seemed like it fit neatly within a more studio art style practice where you are doing your work creative work and that becomes part of your validation but then also you know you do the the typical work of an uh academic

so those are things that I was I wanted to find a place that would allow me to do that kind of stuff um other points that that do strike me as really uh important in this job too though is that you know I think this helps me certainly with uh credibility in the classroom uh you know there was a time before I was doing quite as much Indie development but maybe I was just teaching the software where somebody might be like well why should I listen to you you've never published a game before and now you know with my own independent practice the students like that's not even really a factor you know the students um will be like well yeah we know that you did these did these things um you know and and then again the creative freedom aspect um frankly in a practical sense the the academic job pays my bills and then I don't have to rely on the commercial performance of some of my games I can make um weird experimental stuff I can go

from tabletop to video game I mean I'm working on a Game Boy game right now like uh as a side project and I can do that because um you know I can I can put out a a broad scope of things uh based on just experiments I want to do yeah and I I a little bit contrary to some of the responses I kind of fell into it I like tripped and fell into a giant puddle of game design uh that sounds messy but it and I guess it is kind of messy but um I decided to be actually my uh from the beginning I have always wanted to be uh teaching at the at high in higher education and being a professor originally thinking it was going to be more art traditional art sculpture was my background but my love of technology and games just started to kind of intertwine with my interest in research uh and so I went from being a sculpture instructor to a 3D modeling instructor to a game design instructor um and so my research practice has

followed that as well so a little bit different but you know I like many of you have said it's probably more complex a route than perhaps definitely more complex than others but I wouldn't I wouldn't trade it for anything that's actually interesting there because I didn't know that value but like that um that kind of resonates with me as well because like well as being you know from Europe um higher education is pretty affordable so I just get you know I got my masters I'm like well I could get a PhD now and I just kept going and then I had a PhD and I was like well let's strike for a professor you know it kind of just kept going like because I've always wanted to make games like ever since I was eight years old I've been making games but yeah just getting the degree since it wasn't super expensive in Europe um that kind of put me in this position where I ended up doing this right so um real quick I do want to jump on and validate the point and Echo the point that you just said where you you were like I just wanted to make games

um you know with all the professional answers I mean there is a big element of this for me where it was like no I am making video games hear that nine-year-old me like we're making video games now totally all right well um the next thing that was great to open everything let's look at that diagram we were talking about and address the six key topics um and we decided to do this chronologically for everybody watching so you know when we start these projects when we want that academic freedom um we need funding to start making our game though so panelists what's your advice regarding funding oh wow I'll I'll start this one because it's going to probably be different than than some of the others um so again kind of falling back on that that artist mode because that's my background what I knew um when I approached making Tom bow I actually didn't think that much about funding which probably could have might have been a mistake but what I thought

about is money and funding was time I needed time I needed to figure out how to have dedicated time outside of teaching so for my Approach and I say this because there might be some of you out there watching this I actually decided to just apply for a number of artist residencies where I could essentially have a month two months three months where all I'm doing I'm in a literally a cabin in the woods or some other institution somewhere else where I'm able to just focus on that so that was one big um approach that I decided to take that obviously later I did need to find funding to support some of the vision I had but to get it going and really for the I don't know a good majority of that project was done at these residencies where all I'm doing is waking up making work going to bed seven days and it's like heaven the idea is just heaven to me um and and so yeah I don't regret that I've I've really loved being able to take advantage of that in my projects to to have nothing else outside distractions so not necessarily a good answer to your question but a different

type of funding this time for me right yeah I mean for me it was also not necessarily like finding the big pot of money um is that an R2 it's less research intense so even though Miami has some support for finding grants it's it's minimal in comparison to our ones um but my position at Miami did come with an endowment so I I had some money every year that I could use for Creative Pursuits so that was really helpful um but for me it was mostly applying for some internal grants like a research League a summer scholarship those types of things but when I started brutal I think it was mostly a matter of like well I want to make this game regardless and I have no money to do it I'll still make it over the weekends um I in hindsight I think one of the things that I would like to do on a future game is look for more money for it because in my background when I was working in a research lab back in Belgium before I moved to the United States um we used to go and get the big pots of Grants and it was like with an entire

research lab like okay we're going to get a grant of half a million to a million dollars and we make games for health but again even though brugal has a very strong educational component I think it would be a lot harder to find that kind of money rather than you know when you're doing a game for health type of um project so for me it was very intentional like let's see what I can do if I have no money and then afterwards if that goes well it will only get better when I start looking for games that might be more fundable but you know it's always going to be a little bit of that balance I don't know I think it's also interesting to once again uh highlight a point you made um a lot of the funding does seem to be in in games for something and I think one of the the points that have come up in our discussion is that sometimes these games aren't necessarily games for something they are games and they might have some other component but they don't necessarily fit neatly into the games for education games for health areas and

um so like myself I've gone for uh you know internal grants uh to do a few game projects um you know we have access to Summer research scholarships I haven't really taken an uh advantage of any of those but you know that's something that we do um at Kent State but and then of course you know there's external things um you know I'm in the early discussion stages of an nah Grant and things like that but um you know part of what we do is you know I've I've utilized like elements of our program to also uh assist so same sort of thing where it's like you're not necessarily going for formal funding but there are already these mechanisms in place that'll give you uh student help you know the ability to to have students uh get compensated for their time in the summer and things like that um and then of course you know I've also

done more industry based funding like again you know both the projects I'm talking about today are Kickstarter funded um so that does give a little bit of freedom in like the subject matter of the games I think sometimes yeah yeah I think that's a really great point and um you know what what I'm hearing resonates a lot with the early days of my project so um you know I started making Walden uh back in uh 2007 right with and there was no there was no sort of um funding available for a game like Walden at that time um I I will say that um we had gotten funding for the night Journey um back in 2005 through the Nea but that was because that was through Bill Viola and um it was a media arts Grant he's a well recognized artist there was a whole path there for you know a media artist

who want to make a game um there was no path for a game designer who wanted to make an art game um and so uh so we did have you know early funding there for the Prototype of of night Journey but when I set out to make Walden on my own um there was nothing I mean I could have applied I don't know for some Grant and Sciences to make a game maybe about global warming at Walden right or something like that but that's not the game I wanted to make in fact the team talked a lot about this should we go for the funding that's out there should we sort of turn the vision of the game um in order to fit into a category of Grant we actually decided not to and so we went without funding for the first five years of the project it was all volunteer work and we did get um a really nice little um uh like 25 000 internal USC Grant which you know that's not a lot when when you know but it paid for some things some students and things like that um and and then it was really what one

of the things I would advise and and this is you know just happenstance but I think it's because we're all out there doing things is that the world changed and people start you know they started there were decisions on the Supreme Court about what games are and and how what kind of you know sort of creative speech they are and and um uh there were you know changes inside of the organizations that provide grants right so during the time that we were working um these grants from the neh came digital projects for the public um became possible the Nea included video games specifically in their call for media arts grants these things began to change right so while things may seem hopeless when you begin um if you work hard what we wound up having was a super articulate prototype when those when those opportunities arose and we were able to apply for the neh and the Nea grants that were coming you know to life during our during our work and you know as Dave said that

money made it possible for us to really build our vision out I mean if they hadn't come at that time we probably would have finished our little game it would have been like like a lot of academic games it would have been sort of you know of a certain quality right but we really had a vision for commercial game and those grants allowed us to build that Vision out and to really polish and make sure that the and work with Scholars and historians in a way that we couldn't otherwise so so I guess one of my advice is for people you know who are out there saying oh no one's funding games like mine is that's okay keep going right yeah yeah no one's funding it yet right yes exactly yeah awesome awesome um so let's move on to the next topic that we have to address what how does your process change when you're doing this with into your University contact what is what is different about is what what's unique about it let's talk a little bit about that so

I mean I come from industry right so uh you know we you know we would make these you know massive games and and ship them ship them and get them out you know we were always building our technology infrastructure and our team was getting like more and more experience right and in Academia you have the situation where you're working with students maybe at most they can give you 10 15 hours a week I mean that's the extreme but then they start crunching on their like Capstone projects and you lose them and then you got to train a whole new group of students every couple years you know they Tran they sort of transition out uh and you yourself I mean Dave's list of things that he's doing I was laughing when you were saying because I was on that track too I was you know chair director of the whole USC game program I was like you know dying right so how do you do that and and and what and how many hours do you eke out a week to spend on your own project right so the whole thing has to become this extended uh experience that is not you know I

mean I obviously in Industry they work long hard hours on games but that's what they get to do you are working long hard hours on games and you are running departments and you are you know grading and and making and doing you know teaching and all that stuff right and that's funny you say that Tracy because that's exactly right I mean for for me with tombow I think I took about three three and a half years to to make it and I said I'm gonna do this on my own I can I'm that artist mindset I'm going solo on this and um for the most part I did and it took longer but I was yeah chair at the time and then director for the school and I had to literally put it on ice for six months right deep storage and then summer would come and I just furiously go um but it was interesting too talking about process is that uh for the second time around for the the game I'm working on now very different of course with a board game but I knew from the beginning what I learned from tombow is I am never

doing a project just on my own again I just I need a team I I kind of graduated from the artist mindset which is very much doing this on my own to more of a developer's mindset where a team we can accomplish things faster better more efficiently but you know most importantly in my my perspective we all have our different skill sets that we're bringing to the table and it's just going to be that much better we're all doing that much better uh so yeah I would agree slow summer is my friend I I really do focus on that with a teaching focused school like Stout so much of our time is dedicated to the classroom during the school year um uh so yeah I I Echo that I would say molasses red tape poops all those things at an institution definitely unfortunately infiltrate into the game development process too yeah yeah I think you know because what resonates a lot with what you just said today for me is like the solo part of it like I'm I don't think I will ever be doing a game entirely by myself um again because uh you know I had a lot of roles to cover as well um as a

professor and I think what I should definitely have done better is the life word balance part of it because it really becomes a lot you end up doing these insane hours and like I mean I got a burnout through it like I don't know if I would be divorced right now if I hadn't done all that even like it's it's been pretty rough and I think one of the things that you want to take into account is just like yeah you want to make sure you get help from other people that can take certain parts out of your hands because even if I look at brutal right now I'm like if only I could have spent more time on the marketing but like I you know I already got a burnout for it like right and I'm still feeling like I should have pushed harder so I think for me personally and I know that's a very personal thing but like making sure that your process involves your life word balance I think that is the thing that I should have done a lot better um aside from that I think for me it was a pretty straightforward process like I tried to do it as much as I could um as I would have done it if I weren't a professor but at the same time it's

something that you have to be very aware of that you are doing two different jobs at the same time almost and you need to cut yourself some slack a lot there so I think that would be my biggest advisor you know 2020 hindsight thought about of doing all this yeah what the way I balance it too is I try to do something for the game every day even if that's like I make a few Sprites um you know having that constant progression is is nice um especially you know with with Nemo like we're hand animating it right so if I can get a few frames in um it's it's really helpful and one of the things that uh you all mentioned the the collaborative part of it um what I like about working on teams especially um and with my current project I'm working with non-academics um as well and we we start to keep each other kind of honest you know if I go

down an academic Rabbit Hole they're the one that can push me back and be like but it's gotta be good for speedrunners you know something that like I'm not even thinking about sorry speedrunners um but then you know on the flip side um I'm the one who can also be like well you know here's how we should approach the art and here's how this can become a study of this media and then that becomes the thing we end up getting pressed for so um that collaborative element is really good uh I totally agree with Bob that you know something's going to fall off for me it was also definitely marketing um and yes you know please take care of yourself um you know for me with three kids like I can't afford not to um so you know I just want to say uh that's what you just said Bob about you

might not be divorced I mean that really touched me um my experience I actually have never done a game well board games but I have never done a digital game just by myself I'm very team oriented and I actually got sick um partially part way through the development of Walden I I had breast cancer and had to go through chemo and radiation and surgery and all those great wonderful things and because I had this team I thought the game was going to stop and it was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced is that they kept going you know when I couldn't come in and when I just didn't have the energy they kept going it was actually extraordinary to to experience and that I even though it's like one of the worst periods of my life it was also um really a wonderful thing to have experienced the dedication of that team wow yeah actually now you mentioned that because I had some students that you know I had in class at the time and some of them contributed like a 3D model left

and right for the game and um you know I had a lot of support from them as well you know it's it's definitely something I should mention as well it's it's a it was heartwarming to see how much support you can get in that way while you're going through hell and back and I wonder and I wonder if we would have received those kinds of support if we had been in a commercial or Indie studio right so you know like my Dean just said whatever you need right right and um I think that's something specific to Academia when you go through a crisis like that that's interesting yeah and I I wonder I hope that the people watching this especially if you're on the tenure track or you're thinking about that uh again Tracy talked about advice earlier in another response and I think that um don't be afraid to reach out to others for support uh I think it's so important to to um seek that and don't think you have to

do it just because you're going up for tenure that you have to do this on your own um and I think we'll see less of that as games evolve but still I think that's important to note too right well um let's move on to the next topic and uh that was ownership so uh how did that work for you guys does the University take all the revenue or you know do you see some return on all the time you invest into the project as well how did that work out anyone want to jump in um so I can I can start um at Kent we have a collective bargaining agreement uh which says that uh it defines anything like this as a work and stipulates that it is the property of the faculty member um so this is again one of the things that attracted me to this position in particular um I've worked for universities where that was not the case

um so you you know would maybe try to coordinate things off um in a certain way but part of you know our agreement but also the what has shaped the culture where I am is that because we own the work um they actively advise us to do stuff like this because you know if we're happy in creating work and then you know it can go out and be like I work at this great place um that is good for the University so um you know I would a piece of advice if you are earlier in your career I would say is you know and and yeah the academic job market is what it is but you know look into those things and and see what you know what again ownership and things like that there might be um because that is an important part of this this journey yeah I'll just chime in it it's pretty

much the same at University of wisconsin-stout uh I think one one um uh asterisk to put on that though is that there is at least in Wisconsin uh very clear law about um if a student creates something that's part of a class then they are having ownership of that rightly so right um uh but so that's one thing that I kept all of my game development um when I was working with students if I was on any projects outside of the classroom as its own independent entity um and then the only other thing I'd say too uh and this is kind of one that I'd be curious to see what other people think about um I've always been in this weird realm of um you know I'm using my universe the the computer my university has given me I'm using uh the software as well I'm not I'm I'm making a not-for-profit game I'm not profiting off of of tombow but at the same time like that's one thing that I know has always been a little bit of a foggy area um so that's one area that that I'd be curious to hear what others think about

too yeah yeah for I mean I um I I actually don't really care about if the game is going to make any money or something um you know I don't need to get additional salary from it because that's why I'm doing this in the first place that that's already covered right um so I was originally I had hope that the university would just want to publish it um but they were like nope we're not going to do that but that means that you know you you get to do everything yourself and you also um get the rewards for that so I ended up setting up lifelong games and then published the game myself um and that worked out fairly well I would say um but yeah Miami it's a similar principle I guess from what you guys have been talking about you can keep the ownership for it um pretty easily um and it worked out that way but you know it all added into the surprise of how much work this was actually going to be because now I'm also managing my own company for it so um yeah that was definitely a stressful thing to do when you're not expecting it I think this is

really topical issue by the way because most University Research most research universities especially where there are grants involved and this is true of USC do claim ownership um if there are if there's federal grants involved right of research and specifically a patentable um uh what they call inventions right um there's rarely any you know language around uh more copyrightable Works which is where games fall into right um and at USC you know the policy is is that uh basically the university owns patentable works that were created through research grants but there are um traditional exceptions for works of art and so uh it was unclear the the IP policy was written um uh in I think uh 2001 or I don't know it's like it's some

insane number of years ago um and in it it says uh you know exception for for works of art um and then there's also this whole thing on software so works of art that are software are not even considered in in the in and so we had to go through this process where we actually cleared um both um uh uh cleared Walden uh specifically as a work of art um night journey is um obviously a work of art um uh made by an artist and um uh uh so we went through and cleared it um as a work of art and therefore the the rights um are retained by me and and I I include the team in that um and then what we decided to do as a team was publish it through USC games our publishing label and to actually return the all of the profits I can't even call it profits all the because it costs so much to make over the years and it's really not profit

um but we returned everything that is made by the game to the lab to fund new students and staff in the maintenance of the game and and you know if we ever got enough to to maintain them in making new games right so that that's our sort of ecosystem that we determine now we could have and other other artists other game marks like Peter Brinson um does something similar but um we could have just as well decided to take it out and make a company since we since we owned it but we determined that it was more important to us to maintain this this ecosystem at the University for Innovation so that was our choice um Dave you had mentioned software in particular and I think this is one area where it's important to talk up um open source software uh under my color chart that I wore for the presentation the rest of the day I've been wearing my blender shirt um blender now has a 2d tool set which is what we are animating Little Nemo in

so um I'm I'm very big on that but yeah I mean we try to um where we can adopt we try to stay like keep those things again cordoned off um so we don't fall into any of those muddy areas um but you know um and then whenever we do like summer internships with students uh you know I either have them intern with pixel please you know the the other organization um or you know that is where pie for breakfast will act as a separate entity um that they are taking the internship with it's not just like a research assistantship or something like that so um you know trying to think about those things it's also a good lesson for students too because it does actually like if you are using free software it does start to get into well this is a way to think about

how to manage your own Studio because now you're like where can I cut costs I can cut costs by not having to pay the subscription for Maya or something like that um so it's like a little bit of Studio Management in there too that's good yeah yeah and I'm going to use that at the Segway in the next part because like yeah one of the resources that you can use at a university or obviously students um and I think for me because well with brookel getting big I I had students involved as well in in a to a lesser extent I guess than um you know it wasn't like a lab that was doing it but um I I recruited some students like hey do you want to help out with some 3D models that I will not really have the time for making and you know in the end I asked them okay in exchange for your do you want some compensation some of them wanted something others didn't um you know in the end broker wasn't a big money maker it just broke even but I was able to give every student what they wanted in exchange for their work so I'm pretty proud about that

um but yeah that that brought a some help but also a lot of concerns as well because even though you know being able to show off Google to my students that looked what I made and they're like oh my God that's really awesome and talking my teaching about and this is what happened when we did this and that in the project or you know showed a project management side or the marketing side of brookel to help my classes it also brought some some friction with it as well for example I have one student that was going to program everything but it really didn't work out and eventually I have to just be like look this is not going to work I'm just going to do this myself and you know I'll give you credit for the work that you've done although I don't think anything actually made it to the game but I'm like if you want to use it in some kind of a way the time that you invested it I'll do whatever I can to help you out you know it's it's still really stressful because obviously you don't want to do that I mean you bring a student because you like their work and you anticipate it's all going really well but yeah that was the thing that makes things a little bit harder for me as well so for our next topic I mean I kind of already did it myself and like

teaching students um any thoughts on that guys I think if I could jump in kind of talking about somewhat of what you you mentioned Bob and Tracy had mentioned this a little bit earlier too um I think sure the the the sad part about uh working at an institution trying to develop a game is it takes a long time it takes a lot longer um but I think one of those benefits is this symbiotic kind of um incubation at least for my me uh that I have where I can I can bring ideas that I'm working on into the classroom when I'm teaching uh that might be project management like or that might be um a new type of workflow uh and then I'm bringing that to test it and prove it and show to the students and teach them but then I'm also learning stuff from their games if I'm overseeing a Capstone project uh so I think that's one really uh wonderful advantage of working within the confines of the institution is that is a freeing thing of the institution that I I think that

uh larger commercial Studios lack that ability to be so flexible and change over time so that would be one thing I'd definitely say that I I appreciate about kind of that teaching relationship with students yeah one of the things that came up um when we were building that diagram I don't know if you have the diagram up right now I do now all right well I mean you can see um among all those bubbles you know we have like University program students kind of huddled into one area but then we have that Big Arc of arrows going into the field and then you know the rest of the arrows kind of weave their way back to the university program that's one of the things that I think doing this has really been a benefit in the classroom is that um you know people think of like teaching is this other thing sometimes and I don't I don't agree with that at all I think um you know all of this stuff feeds

itself where if I do something in my game development I mean you better believe I'm going to go talk about that in the classroom and and offer a perspective whether it be in how I model my class to be like what it's like in the real world um whether I take when I'm teaching animation Theory I mean one of the best things was this past fall when I was making my PowerPoints I'm like I have a bunch of gifts from hand-drawn animation for a little Nemo in there of squash and stretch okay get Sprite of flip put in PowerPoint um that was also that was really great so you can see it like actual working models not just me showing Looney Tunes um though I love Looney Tunes um but you know then you can really offer perspective on what it's like it's not theoretical anymore it is real and you know we get to make that come alive to the students in such a way that they see what it's like to really get into

the industry instead of again sort of like a fiction that they're fed about what it's like getting into the industry so I think that's a really important point is that you can start to have real conversations about this as a job well to just to build on that a little bit Chris also they can graduate with a shift game so you know this is um invaluable to the students right um and so you know for me it's you know you what we do to solve the problem that that Bob was talking about was maybe you know maybe are they a fit do they are they doing reality capabilities because a lot of times in the beginning here we we basically have all the research Labs present with what jobs they have open and then people come and visit our working meetings and they sort of gravitate towards what their expert you know what they can do and what the project needs and often if if there's not a fit they'll just fall away and

it's sort of like this thing where we have a kind of trial period before we actually hire them it's like an internship it's like a it's it's kind of like somebody visit they listen to us working they say I think I can do this I said why don't you give it a try let's see if it works out then we hire them right it's a kind of a test in a way um we also have been very very lucky in getting placed getting placements of graduate research so the university has a graduate research program and you know a number of our students get research appointments and then we can ask to have them placed in our labs and um with this you know kind of method we get people who are you know being paid they have a stipend they get credits um it's a it's it's actually a real appointment for them you know and that's a level of commitment Beyond just hourly student workers that I think has worked really well

for us throughout the the process I think um and to go back a little bit too you know you were bringing up um the structure of like the sort of the the um early work like tryout period right I think that's one of the things that I've learned through working with students on projects like this in our internship course is the ways in which you do have to bend your process a little bit you know if if I'm working with a animator who's been the industry like five years or something like that I could be like all right go make a run cycle and they'll go make a run cycle um but working with the students it's almost like you know you really have to bring them in and and you know their entry level to Junior and you have to you know I can't just say go make a run cycle or if I do I might have to redo that Run Cycle later but you know we've started to

we've gotten better about doing things like and I'm speaking mainly as an animator right now um or artist animator I could do something like I do all the key frames of the animation and then I hand the that document the keyframes off to the the junior artist and then I say all right can you do the in-betweens and a model like that it's a little more work for me but the student has that Baseline so that everything comes back way more coherent um where you know so you do have to like change your process a little bit but it does or your design just to kind of yeah one of the things that we found is sometimes you find students with special talents and we have put features in based on those special talents right um and like one of our students was really great at animating hands which we hadn't had and so in the original design there were no animated hands and

um so we had the student he was a graduate researcher he's like he's like let me try this right and so he did it and we're like oh my god let's let's add this to the game that's awesome too because their hands are not easy you're good at it so you know there's a um teaching is obviously a really big part of you know the professor game designer but the other part is how are you going to be evaluated by your University now um I realize that we are you know we're taking a lot of time to discuss all these topics and we need to make sure that we wrap it up in the time slot so I'm going to go a little bit off script because our last two topics are dissemination and validation but I feel that those are good topics that are close together so that we can kind of address them a little bit faster so um what do you guys think how do you disseminate your games how do you make sure with University respects what you're doing and values it for tenure and for all sorts of performance reviews so as the pre-tenure person on the panel um I'm gonna start off here

um I'm I'm actually in somewhat Uncharted Territory for my unit um so I'm kind of the guinea pig uh you know our program was just accredited last year so we are um and there has not been a tenured person in my field yet um so a lot of this has had to do with contextualizing these works properly in a way that people can understand like from other fields what these are um because the school at a high level is in support of this kind of work but you know and I'm actually working on my tenure documentation right now um they're you know my my uh yearly check-in thing um so I have to do a lot of extra work in my narrative for example to describe like what it means to publish a game uh if I publish something quick you know that try to contextualize that you know

kind of build it out to be like well that something quick and small like a game Jam game might be the equivalent of doing you know maybe a smaller paper um whereas you know if I spend two years on a game uh like La Mancha or like Nemo is you know going to become um you know try to contextualize that in in steps of like well this is like prepping a book um so you have to do a lot lot of explanation and working with um you know if you have like a faculty Mentor that's the best we have a great mentoring program in our program so um you know that that's really helpful but learning how to I guess describe these things is is one of the biggest things that I have to do I think what you said about mentorship is it is really good I'm glad you brought that up Chris because especially for those that are on the on the tenure track or perhaps just just get into it uh academic instructor adjunct finding

others that have helped Blaze that trail is going to be very very helpful to have them as allies and I would say too just as a kind of a somewhat of a tangent um I'm in the School of Art and Design and so uh when I created tombow I was already tenured but I what I did was yes I put it up online um I did the things that many uh game designers and developers might do but I also because I was in my Art and Design Department I had an art exhibition I thought that it would be a great way to demonstrate to my peers uh that this should be held as a work of art so I had the game but then I had process I had this people were calling it my Pinterest wall but it was basically about 500 images sketches images that I put up on the wall I 3D printed a number of my objects modeled from the game too so kind of trying to create this overall process to help others that obviously we

know it we're surrounded by people that don't frankly understand what we do and how we do it but it's a nice way to bring that to a level that they might understand and I found that to be quite successful even though it seemed like it was extraneous and I didn't I thought I don't know if I should do this I was very happy did at the end because my colleagues who would have been tenuring me if I was intent go on the tenure track at that point would have fully understood what I was doing as well oh okay real quick uh one on the on the point of seeming extraneous though that is actually another way that you can play the game with this yeah is is that you know okay so I made a game now I can publish papers about what I learned from publishing that game how the game you know again based on 400 plus year old piece of literature expresses the piece of literature and the themes within and things like that

you know you start to treat this as a piece of literary criticism Beyond just being a cool game product um so I think that is also a thing you learn how to do is turn this untraditional publication into traditional Publications and you can probably get like a few years of um traditional Publications out of something like this so that's another again it goes back all into that Loop of make thing have it feed your other traditional types of validation yeah yeah I would agree sorry yeah I think for me to the the same thing applied there like I learned at the University as long as I can show that people care about it in some way whether it's through Publications getting accepted or through Rewards or or Awards or you know all that kind of stuff that helps tremendously or even the amount of downloads that you generate publishing that in your 10-year dose City helps a lot

um so you know I can resonate a lot with a lot with those things I think the thing that I want to add though is like I would love to see a category for Professor made games that like festivals and everything because a lot of the times we you know when Brooklyn I had to go up against big companies and like it still did well it's great but I feel like I'm always just you know playing in a competition in which I'm completely um you know over yeah I'm not at the same skill level I mean that's such a funny Point Bob I you know I want to tell you just a little funny story really early on um I had put I submitted the night Journey to the igf and um uh they actually um called me and they're like oh you know we really want to honor this blah blah blah would you mind if we put it in the student category and I was like I was like do you know who Bill Viola is uh I was like I don't think that's appropriate at all right um and you know I think what you're

saying Bob is really interesting because you know we're not Indies we're not commercial and we're not students right and we we live in this this Wild Land Between You know uh Academia and Indie development essentially that you know it's a wonder we get anything made at all right right I just want to go back to a question of tenure and and validation first one second so so when I went up for tenure um there were no places to exhibit your work right I mean when I ordered them for tenure in it was like the um the year before indicate did its first awards okay um so one of the things that um that we had to do was think about okay what about the grants so we had that Nea Grant right and that's always been in my mind that I began to understand how when you get validation in the form of a grant um that that also helps your tenure story all the things you guys were saying so Dave I really resonate with

the what you're saying about um exhibits so I've I've done a lot of focus on getting the works exhibited because that tends to hold more weight than commercial sales um though commercial sales are you know nice they're nice to put in there but exhibits um in important venues and um Awards um are often really uh you know whether they're supposed to be or not they are important when people evaluate your your tenure case right um and grants the the people who voted with their money essentially to support the work that you're doing um really really important yeah and um you know you mentioned uh Professor games in particular uh Bob and one of the things that I think is is really interesting about this is that um first of all I agree and I also agree with the addition that you know we talked about this before where the

traditional forms of validation seem to be for games for X Games for why we like Tracy said we are in this weird in-between position where we are kind of doing commercial stuff so it's not totally for x or y um but you know maybe like my my board game La Mancha had some educational aspects to it because it was based on literature um I would call A Little Nemo informative but I would also call it a commercial video game um so I think what's interesting to me about these though and what I think makes them great works of that you know can be academically validated is that we have to be a little more thoughtful in our game development you we can't just make like cool video games we've got to make cool video game but it's got to have this other element whether it be we are thinking analytically about the design or using a process in a new way or it does have some connection to you

know education or something like that um you know where we're interpreting a classic work or something so you know I call it what what Dave described is um we call it design research yes yeah yeah and we frame it that way when we discuss it yeah I I we say creative research yeah yeah yeah but yeah I mean this is what this is what Architects do this is what graphic designers do um so so I think it has both that academic element but then what's great about this is that it also becomes commercial curiosity we have like these games have that like commercial that some some novelty that gives them a little bit of an edge in the marketplace because they're interesting because frankly we have to feed the academic part and then it also ends up feeding the commercial part so I think that's worth um pointing out and also like talking about in in how these games are distinct

and why they should be at you know different category yeah well um I think we're running out of time here so um to wrap things up because we just discussed the six topics um I'm gonna ask for each and every one of you and maybe like in one sentence if there is one piece of advice that you could give to whoever is watching right now what would that piece of advice be I'll go first and I'll I said it already once but um don't be afraid to uh ask others for help uh bring other people to your team it's a long process it's a hard process you're not an expert of everything even though you might want to think you are and you feel you need to prove it uh ask for help it's going to be the best decision you'll make towards a future project I would say choose your idea carefully don't just do the cool game you think you want to do choose an idea that has some depth that can um you know really

be used for this this academic rigor this design research that has the potential for funding that has the potential for this commercial curiosity choose your idea very very carefully uh I would say as an instructor you're in an important position of power even if you know like pretend your people don't often feel like they have a lot of power but you know you are you are a valuable member of your community and valuable uh to your students and I would say you know these types of projects will bring a community together um you know use them as a way you know we talked a lot about students getting shipped products try to use opportunities like this that you're having to also you know help your students help other people along try to climb that Hill together um you know team up and and accomplish amazing things and you know use this to the benefit of the education you're providing right and mine would be to

build up your community around your game from day one um including the student but also the community around your game because you're gonna need that Community for your game to be validated and to get all the good things that you can have from making a commercial game as a professor so anyways with that we've come to the end of our session again these are only four viewpoints but we hope they were very useful to you and I'm really hoping that we're going to see more sessions like this in the future after all um in the end because it's all about helping as many game professors as possible to be active developers as doing so plays a key part in facilitating those three big arrows in that diagram where the academic gaming landscape improves the field with high quality scholarship and capable students and with that I'd like to thank you all for watching and enjoy the rest of your GDC bye-bye bye-bye foreign