The surge in interest has led schools to add games to their menu — but not always to the benefit of its students. Recruiters say they often see "mills" that run around-the-clock sessions to quickly churn out as many students as possible. Other programs teach specific skills but not how games are pulled together.

"It's a very hot academic growth area," said Colleen McCreary, who runs EA's university relations program. "I'm very worried about the number of community colleges and for-profit institutions, as well as four-year programs, that are using game design as a lure for students who are not going to be prepared for the real entry-level positions that the game industry wants."

I was up at USC yesterday for a non-game related workshop and had dinner with a friend who is in USC's Interactive Media MFA program; I continue to be impressed with USC's record of success and the students that go through the program. It's a shame — but not a surprise — that the field is getting cluttered with programs that simply don't have the resources, know-how, or curriculum to help place graduates in the industry. While it often seems like 'academic gaming' and 'real-world gaming' will never quite meet, this is one point that the industry as a whole should have more discussion about. The other two articles of the LA Times series are worth a read, as well.

Majoring in video games [LA Times]

This is a nice look at the making of Winterbottom and designing in an academic setting; I enjoyed the parts of the game I got to take a look at, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. The USC program is really pretty exciting, in that their students and graduates are actually going on to do something.

[via IndieGames]

Game courses in engineering schools tend to be focused on solving technical challenges, whereas design programs focus on the innovation of gameplay. To produce the best possible student game, these two forces need to collaborate.

For interdepartmental game classes to work, I feel the focus should always be on what is best for the project. Collaborative game development should be approached as more than a system of technical features. In the case of Winterbottom, learning to work on a team was more important to the student engineers than getting the recording features to work. Although learning to solve technical challenges is extremely important for students, in a class where the object is to make a good game, the focus should be on just that.

All of this makes me pretty glad I'm part of a 'lonely discipline,' where we're more or less turned loose to do our own thing. An interesting read and worth a look if you're interested in what goes on in the hallowed Ivory Tower.

Student Postmortem: USC's The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom [GameCareerGuide]

Hush offers a glimpse, as it were, of how vignette might be used successfully in games. As an exploration of the potential of the style, the game is a success. And as a vignette of a situation in mid-90s civil war-torn Rwanda, the game is compelling, if perhaps simplistic and overly mawkish.

The anxiety of literal death contradicts the core mechanic's demand for calm, but in a surprising and satisfying way, like chili in chocolate. The increasingly harsh sound of a baby's cry that comes with failure attenuates the player's anxiety, further underscoring the tension at work in this grave scenario.

The game itself is very short, somewhat successful (Bogost wonders if the designers had ever rocked a child to sleep, since the actual game mechanic can be somewhat jerky and on the opposite end of the spectrum from the soothing activity of singing and rocking a child to sleep), but interesting — they are successful in conveying a sense of rising panic with the need to stay calm. The game is available for download in Windows and Mac formats.

Videogame Vignette [Gamasutra] & Hush [Jamie Antonisse]

In light of the recent decision by the festival organizer Peter Baxter to pull Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the line-up of finalists, we no longer feel that the contest represents the best interests of independent game makers; rather, the decision undermines the credibility of the festival as a venue for independent games and invalidates the reasons that USC Interactive Media had been proud to sponsor this year's student prize.

Check out her lengthy, and thought-out reasoning for withdrawing support of the wavering game fest. Brian Crecente

USC Interactive Media Division Withdraws Slamdance Sponsorship [Ludicidal Tendencies]