Balancing Entertainment and Educational Objectives in Academic Game Creation

Abstract

Production experiences are important to the educational progression of game design and development students. Coursework that leads to a quality deliverable is highly desirable by students, faculty, and industry for both pedagogical and portfolio purposes, including a focus on multi-disciplinary teamwork, and professional practice at scale. Despite the impetus to provide meaningful production experiences, successful execution within an academic context can be difficult. The situation is further exasperated when the result of the production experience is more than just an entertainment product – i.e. a game that embodies and facilitates a learning outcome. This chapter presents the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from two cases in which the authors created a production-oriented classroom experience utilizing a game studio model. The authors also address the balance between entertainment goals and learning outcomes in educational game production, including how such balance influences faculty and learner comprehension of design and process techniques.