Work and play

Gaming can rise to an art form, says veteran designer Ernest Adams, who visits Dublin later this month. Karlin Lillingtonreports.

Ernest Adams, veteran games designer, writer and teacher, likens the game designer's role to that of a prime minister seeking consensus, contrasted with the more presidential bossiness of a film director.

"Game design is extremely collaborative," he says, whereas in film-making, a director has vast power over the decisions that go into a film. "Designers don't get that kind of control."

That's a key point he'll be trying to get across to a room full of teenagers on November 24th, when for the second year running, he will lead a day-long games design workshop for secondary school students at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

The founder and first chairman of the International Game Developers' Association, Adams wrote the university textbook Fundamentals of Game Design and was a lead designer at Bullfrog Productions on the Dungeon Keeper series and the audio/video producer on the Madden NFL Football line for Electronic Arts.

In the workshop, he lectures on the fundamentals of game design before splitting students into teams where each takes a different practical role - project leader and story writer, game mechanics designer, user interface designer, level designer and art director - and is given an idea for a game that they will have to work out in concept and execution by the end of the day.

"The idea is to try and show prospective students what it's all about. All you need to know about it is playing some games. It's very hands-on, but entirely on pencil and paper. I want to make the point that designing a game is largely a mental exercise," he says.

It's an appropriate viewpoint given that Adams was a philosophy graduate of Stanford University who also loved programming computers. That also might explain his passionate belief that gaming can rise to an art form.

"We're kind of where the film industry was in the 1920s - we have the status of light popular entertainment," he says. "We're working to achieve the status of an art form, but we don't have that credibility yet." He laughs: "That sounds a bit grandiose."

We are "maybe 10-20 years" from seeing games take what he sees as their rightful place as a recognised art. But already, the best games can be rich experiences, full of depth.

"Games can have themes in the same way novels and films have themes. Games can have messages, and can convey certain ideas."

A good example, he says, is a game called Bioshock. "On the surface it's about shooting things, about blowing things up. But it is also a savage parody of [ philosopher] Ayn Rand's objective reality," he says, launching into a spirited analysis of how and why.

He thinks the gaming industry is on the verge of a transformation. Right now, he says, there's a battle for shelf space in retail shops due to the very high costs of game development.

"The pressure is unbelievable. Every year about 300 movies are released, but 3,000 games are released. If it's not a hit within 2-3 weeks, it's gone. As long as we're tied to retailers, there's no ability to address niche markets."

But electronic distribution of what is, after all, already bits and bytes is set to change that model to one of downloads. "Five years from now, I wouldn't want to be a bricks and mortar games retailer," he says.

And what about the Republic? Given that the Government has specifically identified gaming as an industry to promote and develop, what is Adams's view of where we are now?

"Ireland is doing a lot of things right. It's a very high-tech place. The educational opportunities in gaming at places like DIT are exactly what the industry needs. It will be turning out educated workers skilled in these sorts of things."

What should we be doing in the future? "The Government needs to keep reaching out to games developers and games publishers. Games are expanding into so many areas; there's mobile gaming, serious gaming, gaming as an art form. Ireland could very well set up a competitor for Ars Electronica [Austria's famous electronic arts event]."

As for the future of games? "The holodeck [from Star Trek] is kind of our Holy Grail. But I think we'll probably get the physics of the holodeck before we get the storytelling part down." As Adams notes wryly, "We can't do Dickens yet, or the Grapes of Wrath."

• For further information on the workshop, e-mail: hmcatamney@comp.dit.ieor call: 01-4023282