In the second part of our interview with Mark Eyles, the games industry veteran and Principal Lecturer on the games degree courses at University of Portsmouth describes his transition between the two fields and makes a case for the role of academia in games.
Why did you move from a hands-on, traditional game designer to PhD candidate? Once I started working at the University of Portsmouth it was a natural move to start a part time PhD. It's the sort of thing that lecturers do! This was also a very natural move for me. Anyone working in the games industry has to keep up to date with the latest technologies and game design ideas. You are constantly learning and constantly working at the cutting edge. Progressing to doing a PhD is very natural thing to do.
From your perspective as a successful games designer and current academician, what is the relevance of academic study for games design? There are two answers to this question. Firstly from the perspective of students who wish to become game designers: Any learning is going to help. Completing a BSc or MSc indicates that you are more likely to have the necessary intellectual skills that are required by the games industry and increases your chances of getting an interview for a design job.
There are differences in studying games as a researcher and developing the skills required to be a successful game designer. For example, knowing a game in incredible detail and being able to write academic papers about it does not necessarily indicate that you will have the skills to design a successful game. Studying what has gone before and current best practices helps in becoming a game designer, though this is not enough by itself.
Game design, like many things, is something that you can improve by practice. So academic studies that include opportunities to both design games and to reflect on the design of games are going to help.
There are a number of skills that should be embedded in any academic course that is focussed on game design: project management, communication and team working skills. These form a basis on which to build subject specific (game design) skills.
Secondly from the perspective of game design researchers: As I mentioned earlier academics are not under the same financial pressures as commercial game developers. They can look further ahead than the games industry and try out things that have no obvious commercial potential. Research into games and game design can offer important insights into games. This is all pretty new still; the games industry has historically not often been very close to academics.
However, the industry has matured and universities have recognised games as an important area for study. You can see the evidence for this in the both the number of game related university courses and the number of researchers investigating different aspects of games.
I believe there are some interesting methodological issues around the use of games and game design in research. Some of the techniques and methods that drop out of this are certain to have relevance not only for game design and research but also for the games industry.
