Full house, rapt attention.

This Open House summary is courtesy of John Henderson, attendee at the Open House.

Austin Community College's Video Game Development program had its second open house on Wednesday. For those who read my report last year, much of the following will be familiar, but there was more to see, different people to talk to, and a touch more confidence in a program that's still growing steadily after two years.

Program coordinator Bob McGoldrick's presentation [slides] began by outlining exactly what ACC's program was, but it seems more important to reiterate what he said it is not. It follows the continuing-education format, so it is not a way to earn a college degree, though college students could take its courses as a supplement to their degrees. The courses are also not "sit and listen" experiences -- they are challenging work, as Bob explained, and it's work that puts the emphasis on applying what's learned in projects, using a team philosophy. Big-name game projects always require teams of people with different sets of skills to work together, so part of the program requirements include a "Capstone" project where teams of students are put together (like the Real World of game development, developers don't get to pick who they have to work with,) and given a mentor, a deadline and a panel that acts like a "publisher" to which students must promote their project as it's developed.

Bob McGoldrick, coordinator of ACC's video games program and interim director of its High Technology Institute.

Probably most important, the ACC program does not guarantee job opportunities to those who complete the program -- though he pitched that making connections with staff, made up of local game-industry professionals, is the next best thing. The program board and instructors aren't tenured professors, but as Bob put it, "their pedagogy may be weak, but they know what they are talking about."

Then it was time for four students of the Interactive Writing II class, taught by Vernon Reed and Jeremy Gibson. Bob pointed out that this was not a Capstone project, rather it was what happened when only five students signed up for the class. Other teachers might have called it off, he said, but instead the teachers made a team out of the students. One of them, David Marcum, gave the pitch for their project, a "mod" of Neverwinter Nights called "Never Black and White." David explained it as a "medieval murder mystery" where the player-character is a stranger to a kingdom where the king was recently murdered, and for various reasons the PC is framed for it. The object of the game is to investigate the king's murder, play politics with those around, and ideally find the real killer. He followed the pitch by projecting an opening cinematic with pencil drawings (I gather they were supposed to look like etchings) and story text in English, with a voiceover track reading their translation in Latin. This was followed by another non-interactive sequence where the PC arrives in town and is quickly assailed by angry townsfolk, who are stopped by a local law-and-order official.
David Marcum and team members, minus one who was absent because his car broke down in another state.

Bob then called on game-industry professionals who support the program in various fashions. Quoc Tran, president of the Austin Game Developers group, expressed his wish that "something like this" had existed when he was an idealistic college student. He considers himself lucky to have had one professor with game industry experience who pointed him in the right direction, and ACC has "a whole fleet of instructors" for students to use. Billy Cain of Critical Mass Interactive and both a board member and production track lead, said having a job in the game industry is "like being in a war." Rich Vogel, formerly of Sony Online Entertainment described it as an "industry that eats its young." Gordon Walton, likewise recently of SOE but also between jobs at present, said it was "an excellent way to ruin a great hobby," because game developers get so busy, they run out of time to play fun games. But, Gordon said, "if you have passion for your work, it's not work anymore."

Photos: