Committee Meetings and Minutes

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Game Development Institute

Meeting Minutes

Current Status of Minutes: Final
Date	March 30, 2012
Time	12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Location	HBC 411.0

Members Present
Richard Baldwin, Gail Bayeta, Bjorn Billhardt, Sara Farr, Garry Gaber, Jason Hughes, Mary Kohls, Brandon Lackey, Nicholas Macron, Rudy Martinez, Mark Nau, Nick Resa, Craig Rundels, Matthew Scibilia, Linda Smarzik, Jesse Sosa, Kalani Streicher, Gordon Walton, Deanna Whaley
Guests Present
No guest attendance has been recorded.

Item # 1:	Old Business - Welcome Dinner & Introductions
Presenter	Linda Smarzik, Gordon Walton
Discussion	Welcome and Introductions: Chair Gordon Walton welcomed the committee and called the meeting to order at 12:00pm. All members introduced themselves and stated their industry professions. The Chair then called for the next presenter on the agenda, Linda Smarzik.

Item # 2:	GDI Background, Overview & Role of Advisory Committee
Presenter	Linda Smarzik
Discussion	Linda Smarzik thanked the members for attending, explained the importance of their input at the meeting and gave a brief overview of the Game Development Institute's (GDI) history from the inception on the CE level to the 3 degree paths on the credit side of ACC. She explained the expansion and renovation of the GDI with regard to faculty, space, curriculum and student enrollments. Statistics have shown that the GDI's program has almost doubled in enrollments over the past 3 years going from 513 enrollments in FY09 to 902 enrollments in FY11 and expected to exceed 1000 by the end of FY12. She briefly explained the future goals of the GDI with regards to ACC's purchase of Highland Mall and a proposed creative cluster incorporating all of the digital creative art departments at ACC.

Item # 3:	New Business - Industry Support for Students
Presenter	Garry Gaber
Discussion	Industry Support – GDI Info Sessions (through meetup.com) - Garry Gaber informed the members the need of industry support for the GDI. He introduced Colin Blankenship and informed the members that Colin has been running the meetup sessions and asked the members for names or volunteers to assist in the monthly meetups held by the GDI. He also asked for assistance in seeking local internships for the GDI students. Members responded that they would give him or Colin contact information industry personnel they could contact. Current industry skillset - Mr. Gaber asked members what skills have been noticed as lacking in entry-level applicants they hire and what should we be training our students in? Input was as follows: General: * Gordon Walton explained that the highest risk of a new hire was socialization. They either don't adapt to the culture of the company or had previous expectations of how games were made, only to find out there were in over their heads. * Matt Scibilia stated that new inexperienced hires get bored very quickly because they don't understand the process of building a game from talk to design to build to play. If it is a short term mobile project they are easily immersed right into the project. However if it's a long-term project then the new hires need to be guided on how to do thorough useful research, which for a small studio is manageable, but for a large studio, is time consuming. Also very important is for the different disciplines to work together on a project (programmer, designer, artist). * Jason Hughes stated the problem new hires encounter is the false expectancy that they know everything and do not ask questions. They are in fear of losing their job if they don't know an answer to a problem. * Jesse Sosa agreed that students be taught that it is ok to not know the answer and not be afraid to ask questions. Each studio has their own way of working with the tools and don't expect new hires to know their way around all that they do. * Mark Nau explained that sometimes "I don't know" is the correct answer and is important part of problem solving. If students do not know the techniques of research and solving problems then they will not last long in any position. * Bjorn Billhardt stated he is looking for Java developers and are extremely hard to find in Austin at the current time. He has a lot of visual artists applying but no one with the aptitude or analytical skills to develop. Art: * Jesse Sosa stated he was a character artist and suggested students learn traditional art skills (anatomy, color, etc.). Also should learn the theories and practices of low poly first and then have them build up to ZBrush. When asked by Mr. Gaber if ACC should be teaching character modeling, Mr. Sosa stated that students should know some character modeling. * Craig Rundels added if students had prior traditional art training, then learning the tools for character modeling would be a good skillset to have. However, when he is looking for a good CG artist, he noticed that proper lighting techniques fall short. They only learn lighting in the software they are using and do not understand other lighting measurements, such as theatrical lighting. There is some foundation in that a student needs to understand juxtaposing warm and cool colors, in certain environments and certain things, works better than just painting something the way you think it looks. Using different kinds of lights to accent backgrounds versus key players and so forth are the key elements of a scene. * Nick Resa explained that when he graduated from ACC, the program was very young, and they were still trying to figure out what to do He didn't know anything about edge flow or normal maps. He researched on his own through YouTube where he found tutorials. He had the passion and drive to teach him self what he had not learned in school. Students need that passion outside of the classroom. Programming: * Gordon Walton stated that up to two thirds of the applicants he sees do not have logic skills. They either do not have the skills or they lock up under pressure. Also, their studio won't hire programmers who will need a lot of time investment to bring them up to company standards. By the time they have advertised a needed position that usually means there is a spurting artery problem that is in need of a tourniquet. If the applicant is not the tourniquet then they will not get hired. * Andre Arsenault agreed that people coming out of specialized game programs are often very uniform, especially on the programming side. Everyone has done the same projects, and they've worked with the same size teams and the same scope. They can all cooperate behind the scenes to help each other out. The end project is so important because it shows that they've done something no one else in their curriculum did before. They've chosen to break off an interesting challenge that's not part of the course load. They did it because they're interested in it, they want to solve it, and they want to do something new. We might ask in an interview "Why did you choose that problem? Why did you choose to solve it? How did you choose to solve it?" Are they passionate about it, or did they just do it because that was the problem they were told to do?" Design: * Garry Gaber explained the interdisciplinary curriculum used throughout the program and how students have two semesters of working on teams to develop game levels. He further explained that the game design majors are mostly learning scripting and level design. * Mark Nau added that is the creative director and hires designers. He looks for different things from designers all the time and it is very a problematic position even to describe, much less hire. The core problem with educating designers is everybody who is a designer, who is called a designer, should have a core competency of decomposing and analyzing things, in particular games. It is a core skill that they will not be allowed to exercise until they have six years of experience in the industry. The thing they will be doing before that is really one of three things. They will be making levels, they will be balancing or doing scripting, or they will be working on user experience. If they have a strong skill set and are able to do one of those three things, they will be hired. Garry Gaber thanked the members for their input and passed the discussion to Mary Kohls to begin curriculum discussions.

Item # 4:	Curriculum Reviews & Discussions
Presenter	Rudy Martinez, Mary Kohls & Garry Gaber
Discussion	Curriculum – Game and Visualization Programming: Mary Kohls informed the members that she was there to discuss proposed changes in the Game and Visualization Programming degree. Dane Marshall who created the revisions, could not attend, but Rudy Martinez was there to present the proposed changes and answer any questions members might have. She also informed the members that UT had toured the GDI facilities and were impressed by what we were doing. They were looking to add courses in their computer science degree for some students to take in the gaming area. It seemed as though they had a lot of gaps as they really did not have any game industry faculty to teach them. The GDI is hoping to articulate courses to UT so students can transfer there to continue their education. She then passed the floor to Rudy Martinez. Rudy Martinez directed the members to supporting documents and explained that his intention was to go pretty quickly through it, but spend more time talking about individual topics or question areas if we needed. He explained the primary improvement was a focus on mobile development. Currently there was one mobile course in the degree plan and they propose to add an additional mobile course. The focus is on Android, Java, vDeck, Eclipse. The current GAME 1394 mobile course is in semester four and the proposed additional mobile course is in semester five. He further explained that the semesters or order of courses was a suggestion and by no means did students have to take trigonometry, for instance, in the second semester. They may elect to take that in the first or the fifth. Prerequisites are in force, so they do have to adhere to those. Adding the additional mobile course was the significant change on the degree plan. That was based on feedback from the students - a lot of excitement, a high retention rate, high attendance, and was one of his desires to make as an improvement to the existing curriculum. Another change was dropping GAME 1359, in semester five, the Game and Simulation Programming course. Dane Marshall wanted to increase that offering to cover graphics more intensely, and we've made it two courses. Mr. Martinez further explained in detail the following changes: "We've gone from one mobile course to two mobile courses. Two additional Game and simulation programming courses which are GAME 2344, the Direct X course, and semester five, GAME 2347. Both are DirectX based and with a graphics intensity. Game scripting, which is JavaScript and Unity based offering has moved up to semester two." Mary Kohls explained that the practicum/restricted elective rubric and course number was revised to make it a more general CIS course, which covers Game and CIS students. She informed the members that it requires 200 hours a semester with industry partnerships. The course will cover the multiple majors in CIS: networking, programming, application, and game programming. She explained that ACC has been working with industry partnerships, one of them being Matt Scibilia, but that the game industry is actually the hardest place to obtain partnerships because the students usually do not get paid. Rudy Martinez reiterated the changes and asked the members if they had any questions. Jason Hughes stated that he briefly read over more of the details of what the courses actually entail. He felt that if the intention of the computer programming degree plan is to produce hirable candidates he must express his strong concern that there was so much emphasis on 3D graphics, because 3D graphics is something that, when you're actually in the industry, you'll spend years learning. Trying to squeeze that in and make that a beneficial key point for your typical developer, might actually be harming them rather than getting them more prepared because there're so many other things they could be focusing on. The number of people that actually do low level graphics programming is dwindling every year. There are a handful of people who do it in every studio. Currently a lot of studios do not have a graphics programmer. They contract out to the specific people who can come in and do that for a short period of time because it's all they need. Rudy Martinez made note of the remarks and asked if there were any others from members. Mark Nau suggested that students be given little snippets of practical application problems on an ongoing basis and have them figure out what algorithm is going to fix that, and implement that algorithm. Andre Arsenault added that he definitely wanted to echo the sentiment about two graphics program classes probably being a little too much. He stated that he thinks one course is sufficient to teach that. 3D graphics is definitely a specialty, and you don't need very many of them on one team. Gordon Walton added that exposure to middleware was important because they gain real world experience. They are never going to get to build an engine, they're going to be using some other engine. The more engines they get exposed to earlier, the better off they're going to be. Garry Gaber asked Mr. Walton if he meant understanding the source code of a Middleware engine, and being able to modify it? Mr. Walton answered, how to make games inside of the engine. Whether it's Unity or whether it's Unreal, they need to be exposed to some of those frameworks. They are just like languages to learn to be able to operate. About 95% of the hires are going to do general gameplay programming. Rudy Martinez encapsulated the recommendations back to the members for verification, which were: lighten exposure on the graphics side; add some opportunities in middleware; give engine exposure; and allow general gameplay. He stated that with this information they could now go back within the faculty group look at potentially replacing our increased emphasis on graphics with a combination of middleware, engine exposure and general gameplay. He further informed the members of some revisions he inadvertently didn't mention and directed them to the proposed degree plan. He informed the members that that the COSC 1320 C++ Programming was replaced with COSC 1337 Programming Fundamentals II. Also, that COSC 1315 Fundamentals of Programming was replaced with COSC 1336 Programming Fundamentals I, which will touch on C++, but move on to Python for most of the course. The C++ programming curriculum will be taught in COSC 1337. Jason Hughes made the suggestion of having courses in server programmers. He stated that the industry could absorb every server programmer if there were enough to go around. Mary Kohls stated that within the restricted electives are server-based courses. Mr. Hughes suggested it be made more obvious to the students following the degree path as it is a very accessible career. He further stated that there are about three different positions that he would look at a person coming out of ACC, or even the University of Texas or anywhere and those would be server level, gameplay programming, and UI user experience. Mary Kohls explained to the members the process of having the proposed curriculum approved and asked the members if they would like to approve the presented curriculum without the extra graphics course? Gordon Walton asked the members if anyone would like to make a motion to approve the proposed degree plan with the changes discussed? (See Motions under topic #5). Game Design: Garry Gaber directed the members to the proposed Game Design degree revisions. He explained that more training for mobile devices was added and the intention is for the game designers to create simple art that can go into a simple application like GameSalad. The course proposed is GAME 1476 Art Creation for Mobile Devices. However, the designers do not currently receive Photoshop training in the degree and they would need to know Photoshop to create the art prior to taking the GAME 1476 class. In order to do this, an additional new course, GAME 1475 UI Design for Games, which will teach students Photoshop and UI Design for Games is also being proposed. Also proposed is removing the Interactive Writing I and Midi courses. Mr. Gaber explained that we have only placed one student as an interactive writer, and the course is non linear writing for games. He also added that in today's market, music is very accessible and he does not feel that students need to learn Midi. He would rather replace the course with more useful courses for the designer such as logic, design, and art creation for mobile devices courses. Mark Nau agreed stating that interactive writing was a very niche position. He also noted that the MIDI 1331 Midi class was just as unnecessary and should be removed. Jason Hughes stated most people and small studios, are going to go online to one of the three or four places to get royalty free stuff, and just grabbing it and plugging it in. There are already sound systems built into most of the engines. He also stated that he would suggest the designers learning more programming. After a lengthy discussion it was determined that the two programming courses GAME 1315 Fundamentals of Programming and GAME 2341 Game Scripting would cover the basic programming languages that the designers needed to know. The subject of design and logic was discussed and members expressed their dissatisfaction in new hires with regards to problem solving. After discussions of courses ACC currently offers to address the issue, members agreed to replace the MIDI course with a Restricted Elective choice of ARTC 1310 Design Concepts, PHIL 2303 Logic, COSC 1320 C++Programming, COSC 1336 Programming Fundamentals I, or GAME 2472 Game Scripting II. (See Motion below under topic #5)

Item # 5:	Open Discussions & Motions
Presenter	Gordon Walton, Mary Kohls & Garry Gaber
Discussion	Visualization and Game Programming AAS: Andre Arsenault made a motion to approve the degree with the revisions that were discussed. Jason Hughes seconded the motion. Gordon Walton asked for a vote. All approved and the motion passed by acclamation. Game Design AAS & CT2: With all discussions regarding curriculum being concluded, Mark Nau made the motion to approve the proposed degree revisions. Jesse Sosa seconded the motion. Gordon Walton asked for a vote. All approved and the motion passed by acclamation.

Item # 6:	Set date for next meeting & adjournment
Presenter	Gordon Walton
Discussion	Set Date for Next Meeting – Members tentatively agreed on February 8, 2012 for the next advisory committee meeting. Gordon Walton asked for a motion to adjourn. Jason Hughes made the motion to adjourn and the meeting was adjourned at 1:30pm.

Item # 7:	Addendum:
Presenter	Garry Gaber
Discussion	Addendum: After the advisory meeting, faculty who oversee the Game Art AAS met to discuss implications of the proposed revisions in Game Design degree that would affect the Game Art degree. It was decided to suggest the proposed revisions to the advisory committee members via email along with the Game Design and Game and Visual Programming revisions (already preapproved). The proposed changes to the Game Art degree were: * move Mathematics to the second semester in the first year; * add the new GAME 1475 UI Design for Games course in the first semester; * Add GAME 1475 as a prerequisite to GAME 1434 Video Game Art I * Move ARTV 2445 3D Modeling II to the summer semester in the first year. * Move ARTV 1471 3D Lighting and Surfacing to the first semester in the second year and add the prereq of GAME 1475 UI Design for Games and ARTV 2445 3D Mod & Rend II. * Remove ARTV 1472 Digital Painting * Remove Math 1314 as a prereq for GAME 2477 Technical Art Explorations On October 12, 2012, a draft of these minutes and updated proposed degree plans were emailed to advisory committee members (18 industry members in total, 12 attended the meeting) to reply with their approval or comments. Nine members responded with approvals and nine did not respond at all. Revisions have been approved with majority votes of those who attended (7 of 12 who attended approved and 2 who did not attend approved the proposed plans). Approved via email: Tony Bratton Nick Macron Nick Resa Andre Arsenault Jesse Sosa Bjorn Billhardt Gordon Walton Jason Hughes Rich Vogel

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