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Fragna Cum Laude: A B.A. in Quake 262

Posted by jamie from the as-Western-civilization-crumbles dept.
TraCer00t writes, "Ever not gotten a job because you weren't Quake-educated enough? According to this MSNBC article, the University of California at Irvine will start giving out B.A.'s in Quake. Imagine what studying for the exams must be like!" As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them.
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Fragna Cum Laude: A B.A. in Quake More

Fragna Cum Laude: A B.A. in Quake

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  • Re:Sponsored by... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TRUST me Alias is oneof the leading forces in 3d/animation software. i have seen MAYA in a production enviroment and i was really impressed. Also their alias/wavefront Studio was pretty impressive. And not to mention EXTREMELY expensive stuff. One license can be up to the 10 000's of dollars range. Of course i am not an artist or have anything in common with 3d/animation stuff. But from the work i have seen a few guys do in a local studio i was impressed.

  • Re:Read the fscking article.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IIRC the purpose of a college education is to provide a person with the skills required to succeed in the real world (i.e. workplace in one's future career).

    Sadly, you are correct; Colleges of today have mostly been reduced to fancified versions of Vo-Tech schools. Universities and colleges were actually created to serve as centralized repositories of knowledge. The quest for knowledge and the desire to better the world fueled the enrollment books hundreds of years ago. Securing a job was not a concern.

    Today, everything is about the buck. Take a look at this website. Malda started it out as a way to broaden his understanding of the internet technologies and tools. It is now nothing more than his very own cash-cow. The quality of stories has dropped precipitously. Failed moderation has led to inane work arounds like the 70 second delay in replying to posts. Malda has no desire to further his knowledge with regard to making this website better (NNTP version anyone ?). Rather, Malda is more concerned about waiting for his stock options to vest.

  • Re:Sociology, folkdancing, and now this. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Indeed I have. That (the Civil Rights movement) was one of the examples I had in mind. Ask yourself for a moment who told them to do it, and who benefitted from it, and you'll see my point.

    Well, as an African-American who's actually studied the period, unlike yourself, as far as I can tell the Civil Rights movment had it's origin in the Brown vs Board of Education decision of the Uinited States Supreme Court, which outlawed segregation and overturned the 1896 Plessy vs Ferguson decision which instituted so-called "Seperate but Equal" as the law in Southern states. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Martin Luther King and others, decided to act on this and helped organize the Montgomery (Alabama) Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white patron and move to the back as members of her race were supposed to.

    No, those were some liberals who trashed somebody else's freedom, in the name of unearned special privileges for a third group.

    "Unearned special privlages?" Oh. You mean like the right to equal justice under the law; an end to the KKK reign of terror which kept generations of my people down in the north as well as in the south; the right to not be refused housing or a job because of skin color, crap like that, right?

    The "civil rights" legislation of the 1950's and 1960's utterly broke the delicate balance of power between the states and the Federal government,

    The Civil Rights legislation of the 1950's and '60's broke the power of the states to deny Constitutional protection to certain races under the guise of "States Rights." Interesting term, "States Rights," by the way--one of the battle cries of the slave-holding Confederacy during the Civil War, it later became the watchword of segregationist organizations like the Klan, the White Citizen's Council's, the National States Rights Party, George Wallace's American Party, ad nauseum. Whenever I hear it, I'm pretty sure what's REALLY going on in the tiny minds of the people esposing it.

    Yes, Lincoln was a conservative Republican; the liberal Democrats, the party of treason as always, were the party of the slave-owning South.

    Well, of course "conservative" and "liberal" are relative terms. Ol' Abe was considered quite radical by many in his day, not all of them in the south. Next to Thaddeus Stevens, however, "conservative" is an accurate description for his ideas on how to handle the south after the war. As for the Democrats, they were indeed pro-southern and would remain that way for a long time afterward. It might surprise you to know that most African-Americans voted Republican up until the Roosevelt era (Franklin, not Teddy) when FDR managed to gain a large portion of the Black vote.

    Learn some history. You'll understand the world a lot better.

    I would give you, sir, the same advice.

  • I think we can learn from our friends at the X Files on this one. Create a gaming universe with AI bots. Then code all the females you need. With some luck, they will jump computers, learn new tricks on their own, and you could have a whole lab of a mix of The Sims, Quake, and The Matrix. Well, it'll be fun until someone shuts the computer off. Perhaps a minor in Backupology would go well with this.

    Oh, and Nintendo already did this back 10 years ago up there in Canada with courses in SNESology including storytelling.
  • I can understand the objection if you're in something like construction work that requires a great deal of physical strength, because women have to work harder to develop muscles to that point.

    Gee, I've met many women who do construction work.

    ---

  • Well, we can but hope that some students in this course put some effort into developing a top-quality open source 3d game engine.

    I'm surprised that no one in the industry has done this yet. Rather than cross-licensing and paying huge royalties back and forth, all the companies could combine their efforts and just play "feature race", along with spending more of their time on storyboard. Games would get better and cheaper (to make, at least).
  • That was obviously some other limp-brained /fool, since the first guy couldn't moderate after posting unless he posted really AC, not just _clicking_ the AC button. (i.e. from a browser without his cookie.) He could have been bullshitting about forgetting that posting reversed his moderating actions, but if so, there's no reasoning with him. (I'm assuming male here, (AC, not doomy). If you're insulted, then good..)
    BTW, I though that your first post was a good call, doomy.
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • The Linux kernel uses a lot of complicated data structures. (maybe not complicated DS, but used in complicated ways, with many functions which access them). This makes the kernel not very good for teaching about e.g. virtual memory, because the VM code probably does some filesystem and/or scheduling stuff too. To completely understand (like that ever happens :) a piece of code in the kernel, you have to know about a lot of extraneous stuff. (That's been my experience looking at kernel code. I haven't looked at enough to be confident hacking it, though.)

    OTOH, I found it extremely helpful for my third year operating systems course to have read lots of docs about things in the kernel work, and to have written programs which make system calls like open(2), read(2), and mmap(2). (especially mmap. It's cool :). Linux is great as background knowledge when thinking about operating system concepts, but it is too complicated to make case studies from, or try to actually teach directly. Our prof tried to give some examples of real code near the end of the term, but he had to stop and explain a bunch of things, so we didn't get into much code. He did leave top(1) running in the ssh window on the PC connected to the overhead projector, so the class got to watch the system being seriously overloaded (load av. 40--70 on a 4way SMP UltraSPARC, 1GB RAM :). Some guy with a laptop ran a process which showed up as "hey_cs3120" or something like that for a few seconds :)
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • ... is it possible to get a Masters in Game Design? That would be schweet, and just might convince me to stay in school for another few years.

  • ..why not game schools? What seems to be missed by many posters here is that this isn't some sort of fluffy basket-weaving course about how to appreciate games or something, but how to go about creating a good game. You might say "well, nobody needs to take a course to do that -- and you can't teach creativity anyway", but if this is true, why then do most succesful movie directors have a degree in film?
  • I dont understand why you'd go on a rampage and moderate every post of mine down :( I did nothing to hurt you or your beliefs. I am humbly sorry if I did such a thing.
    --
  • At a guess: Outcast.
    This used a voxel engine rather than polygons, so 3D accelerator cards had no effect. The only thing that mattered was raw CPU power. Having said that, the graphics were very impressive and the forest area truly amazing. It is difficult to realistic draw even a static tree and outcast could be showing dozens, all blowing in the wind.
  • JeffK is of course, the best man for the job.

    www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/
  • The title of this slash story is extremely misleading. The course is not about playing games, it's about designing and programming them. I repeat...it is NOT a course about quake.
  • The end of the comment says that, yes, but the title doesn't say anything about it. Also, the poster didn't sound like he had read any of the story.
  • Its all about getting a job out of college. If you want to do game programming, you can have the standard degree which to get it you have to learn all of the programming concepts, OR you can learn all of your programming from a gaming point of view. In the arena of gaming there are probably "hundreds" of programming tricks/tips/algorithms/problems which one will never see in their typical classwork. By doing a specialized program, they will see these tricks in the classroom before a coop/intern/real world setting. It makes you more prepared and more marketable.

    This may be the beginning of specialized degrees. ERP work is where a lot of big money also is and graduate schools are beginning to tailor theor courses so you may specialize in ERP work.

    An analogy to use would be getting a physics degree then getting hired to be mechanical engineer. You would be unqualified even though you know all most of the theory behind mechanical engineering. There may be a potential out there to offer different tracks of the CS degree, similarly as there are different engineering degrees available.

  • Alias|Wavefront are the makers of Alias PowerAnimator also nowadays known as Maya

    They make a few other high-end products such as Maya Fusion. Maya is high-end 3D modeling/animation software for TV, Film, Games etc. Things like the characters in Phantom Menace are modeled in Maya (stress the characters and not the other stuff) and animated in SoftImage. The cheapest version (Maya Complete) is over $7500 USD. I'm currently using both Maya and SoftImage and they are very very very nice packages BUT..there are other very very nice 3D packages at a fraction of the cost.

    As far as the money...you can lease Maya...or SoftImage heh
  • What the hell is WRONG with you people??
    SLASHDOT ISN'T JOURNALISM!! OK, so it is sometimes when they post original articles, but this ISN'T one of those times. This is a link, a summary, and a discussion forum. PERIOD. it isn't MEANT to be journalism. it isn't supposed to be "reporting" shit. it isn't a "story". it isn't intended to be accurate or anything. it is intended to give you a LINK, and a vague description as to the link's content. that's IT. the entire point here is, they show you where to read information on the subject and ask you to respond. they are not "reporting facts" in any way, shape or form. they are telling you where to get facts. I'm amazed i have to EXPLAIN this.

    the article/headline was phrased in such a way that anyone with half a brain cell could figure out what it meant. esp. the part about "As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them." apparently half a braincell is not too common a thing to have, judging from the huge number of people bitching "this is a misleading headline blah blah blah".
    Hey, guess what: Actually reading the article IS NOT THAT IMPRESSIVE. Lots of people do it. You haven't really "discovered" anything by finding out, hey, if you read the first couple sentances of the article linked, the headline which is obviously a flippant joke turns out to be somewhat misleading when taken out of context!

    so given that none of this was intended to be or attempting to be journalism, why are you people so unable to handle it not being journalism..?

    go away and stop cluttering my screen!! if they posted a blatantly misleading summary of something important that's bound to start a flamewar that would be one thing; but no. This is slight irritating goofiness in an article that doesn't matter much.. why do you feel compelled to act offended by it??
    I dunno. excuse me if i am overreacting, but more than six semiidentical comments bitching about how the /. summary (which nobody in their right mind would pay attention to) was inadequate, is just slightly more than i can handle. Especially when some of these posts are at score:3.
  • Wow, I've never had so much fun reading such idiotic ravings. The only thing is I can't figure out whether you really believe this mindless drivel or if you're a troll. If you are a troll, then I salute you. You have exceeded all of my expectations of trolls. If you really believe this stuff then I think you should be shot. But then, what do I know?

    Your evil religion powers will have no effect on me, for I am an athiest! Hahahaha!
  • This almost makes me want to get off my lazy ass and go back to school, but then again, maybe not
  • <em>The liberals always do what they're told, because they haven't the imagination or strength of will to create their own freedom.</em>

    Nope, cause then they're no longer liberals in the boot-licking conservative lexicon, they're called subversives, revolutionaries, communists, anarchists, freedom-fighters, extremists, radicals, and guerrillas.

    Here's an interesting example sure to invoke cognative dissonance in our troll here:
    ESR plays the flute (a fruity instrument if there ever was one) and even dabbled in the occult. He doesn't seem to a hold a real job either, sponging off his wife and anyone willing pay for his opinions (a lot like those new-age self-help gurus!). He probably spent a great deal of time in the machine room in his younger days (what a troglodyte!), and he encourages people to share the products of their labor in some sort of populist revolt against the market structure created by the (unregulated) software industry (commie!). He also borrowed from sociology literature in his manifesto, the "Cathedral and the Bazaar". Oh my god, he must be a stupid, lazy, ineffectual *liberal* then! He probably hugs trees and wants to take our guns away! I bet he eats tofu and listens to Yanni! He must be the most useless, naval-gazing, dogma-spouting apparatchik of the liberal establishment there ever was!

    Besides, I wonder who really is more useless, the person with a degree in game design, or the anonymous coward who must have spent this beautiful sunday afternoon writing trolls on slashdot.
  • I mean, if you don't have a quick trigger finger, there's no way you'll graduate buam luade au quade.
    --
  • The liberals always do what they're told, because they
    haven't the imagination or strength of will to create their own freedom.
    I find that a bit hard to belive, concidering the liberals in America are always pushing for change. Heard of the civil rights movement? Those were some liberals who created their own freedom.
  • Ah yes, it's a degree and I was thinking "course". Wow, that almost makes it worse. Of course, a BA in game programming would be a legitimate degree, whereas a degree in just simple Quake programming would basically be garbage, but I digress.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Alright, I'm just going to assume that you're for real and this isn't just some big joke to see if anyone will buy your bullshit...

    Allow me to try to structure what little reason you have offered into an actual argument:

    1)God exists.
    2)God has decreed that women can not be anything but housewives.
    3)Whatever God says is right.
    ------------------------------------------------ -----------------
    Conclusion: Women can not be anything but housewives.

    Any religious argument undoubtably starts off with premise #1, which is unprovable. This fact dooms every religious argument to failure, but let's continue...

    I don't know where you got premise #2 from-I'm assuming the Bible. If so, where does it specifically state that God made that statement? I have not read the Bible, so I honestly have no idea whether or not this is true.

    I'm assuming your support for premise #3 is that God is perfect, and therefore infallible.

    My only question is this: if your argument were correct, that women are "incapable of anything other than homemaking", then EVERY WOMAN WOULD BE A HOMEMAKER!!! Only a fool makes such an absolute statement for which there is such an abundance of evidence in contradiction. Then again, you have already demonstrated that you clearly are a fool. You might as well make the statment that "every human is five feet tall" or "every tree is pink".

    Neither the Bible nor God ever said that women are incapable of anything other than housekeeping. If you meant that God said women should be housewives, then that is slightly different. But, allow me to ask you this: Even if God exists and he did say that women should be housewives, why should we follow along? In other words, why should we do whatever God says without question? (Please, make a better argument than "because he created us", that is not good enough. Your parents "created" you, but if they told you to kill someone, you shouldn't do it regardless)

    -
  • It seems like people who are interested in the 'design' factors of a game would be better off served with a different major. This degree seems to be one that would leave you the jack of all trades but master of none. Sure you know how to code a decent engine, but do you understand lighting? Or level design? Or simple plot/character design(not artistically but in terms of actual character.) It seems majors like english, theatre or CS would be something more appropriate then some multi-displinary major that leaves you with limited capacity in all fields.

  • ugh. (Score:1)

    by Zurk ( 37028 )
    one would think that time is better spent actually learning something new...oh wait..thats not what universities are for.
  • Programming games makes sense to me. Sony is making more money on PlayStation than they are on movies. If universities have Film programs, why not learn to make games too?

    Hopefully they will branch out a bit from the purely technical and into the social motivations, impact, and theory behind games, gaming and interactive entertainment. Why are they so addictive? Is gaming bad? Is this just repackaged crack?

    Also write and study the history of gaming. There is a rich and vibrant history of creative people that has barely been written down yet. Who thought of the original standards? Who wrote the first first person shooter? (was it battlezone?) What were the authors' lives like, the things that lead up to the creation of Donkey Kong and Ultima?

    There is a lot of opportunity for crossover with other majors here too. The AI in games could learn from and give back to the research in Cog-sci. There is a huge amount of psych crossover as well as the sociology of new communities built around a common activity. Network gaming can be a lot like a bowling league or AA meeting. Do better players also posess charisma in chat?

    The other amazing thing about network gaming is the way certain people excel even in a leveled playing field. Systems and pings aside, some people are just better at others at some games, just like regular mainstream athletics. Like Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky, some people are born naturals. I bet Tony Hawk's mother never imagined he'd one day make a living at skateboarding.

    Maybe it's time for intramural FPS (first person shooter) leagues? Companies are already staging team deathmatches against other companies, just like softball or basketball. I'm sure frats are doing it too. There is money to be won at convention tournaments. Maybe it's time to step up and organize? There would probably be a team skin, but would there be uniforms? (can you picture the "team" parading into the arena in matching sweatsuits? UPN would eat that up ;)

    What about sponsorship? Will Coke buy a 32 pixel block on the back of a good player? Don't laugh, it's coming.

    Joe Maller
  • maybe they should take note of the quote on ./ for today:
    "People disagree with me. I just ignore them. -- Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel"

    and use that to teach c/c++ , if you're going to take the stance you have regarding quake code. Then again, I wouldn't know how complex (or simple, perhaps) code for the linux kernel is, so I wouldn't know how feasible that is. The thing to remember is that it's all in the name of good ol' learning, but, now that I think of it, they could start some kind of cool linux/OSS-based class(es) using linux kernel code, etc (i.e. code from other OSS projects) and analyze it, etc. Yet, as we all know, the vast majority of learning comes from experience/having to do something yourself.
  • Yep, "Web Design" has been heavily pre-paring me for a degree in Quake. At least I'm learning something in there with Quake since the teacher is a complete idiot (cough*"programing was invented in the late 80's"*cough).
  • I suggest you try the two Fallout games -- they are 'unofficial' sequels to wasteland. Much of the same team worked on them and there are NUMEROUS subtle jokes referring to parts of Wasteland. They are, of course, quite good games in and of themselves. Lots of text and non-lineary story, very little cgi, and a great sense of humour.

    When Fallout 2 was finished some of the same team worked on planetscape: torment, which sounds like another great one.

    They're are actually MORE creative, complex games out there than ever -- they just often get lost in the crowd since the crowd is so much bigger. Much like the film industry -- plenty of good movies, just maybe not at the local megaplex.

  • You misspelt corpse. An atheist is something different, not believing in an all-powerful god isn't incompatible with having desires and feelings. The situation is far more complex. The only real difference between an atheist and a ... er, a theist, I suppose, is that an atheist reasons through situations with logic and, barring that, intuition, rather than relying on a static matrix of verbally ambiguated sin acts to guide behavior.

    There's a great incentive for following these rules, irrespective of the existence of God (and of Jean-Paul Sartre). To wit: people who act altruistically have aligned themselves with the species as a whole. Such creatures recognize each other instintively, work together, do better than individuals. This isn't religion, it's common sense. The rewards and punishment are obvious with the merest reflection.

    The rules are 'optional' to anyone with free will. Religion has nothing to do with it.
  • The corpse comment was an (apparently failed) attempt at irony. Sorry for the confusion. :)

    I think religion works because it gives one the opportunity to know what it's like to be a nice person surrounded by other nice people. If you have that, and time, then it's easy to decipher the rules behind the rules, or you aren't so bright, just to learn to trust your smarter friends. This thing isn't important for its own sake, but for what it does to people. Some achieve it through love or compassion, but after many conversations with (the smart variety of) religious people, it turns out that successful logic leads to the same place. :)

    Whatever you call it, it's an incredibly valuable meme that wraps itself up in different guises. Everyone wants it instinctively, but few know how to tell it apart from the things that merely bear its marks. People who got it from family become fanatics for family, people who got it from religion become fanatics for religion, but they're all chasing shadows - words, really, instead of the meanings of the words. There are bad families and bad religions, too. Perhaps such people are afraid to admit that taking the short, non-questioning route, has drawbacks (exploitability) as well as advantages (availability).

    Blame lies with the individuals in the institution, and not the institution itself. You may be able to get rid of lots of baggage by building a new institution, I don't really know. Anyway, focus on people, and I think everything else should fall in place ...
  • Duplicated is probably not the best word. Sure, in the electronic environment copying is easier than ever.

    But how much did it cost to produce in the first place? How much would it cost you to create this product from scratch?


  • Of course I'd expect someone studying at Unreal Tournament to put Quake down. Listen pal, diversity in curriculum is essential to a well-rounded education. I'm sure there's plenty of room for a Quake class, even at UT. Think outside the box.
  • I wonder how this corresponds to the program that was listed in Slashdot before, which was the game university located in Britain. Similar curriculum?
    I also find it interesting that in order to give a degree in a new field, new "standards" have to be set, standards which those creating the degree may or may not have met. Case in point, with my degree track, Digital Media, an art degree, my instructors have told me that they've never taken an art history class in their life. But because they created the degree, they can deem it necessary to have everyone after them take the classes they see fit. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the extra classes, which I see as an opportunity to learn, but I find it extremely interesting to see what kind of precedent will be set to ensure the qualified creation of a game designer.
  • "'Have you ever read a novel called A Clockwork Orange? '

    Yes. Kubric rules. "

    Nitpick, sorry.

    Anthony Burgess wrote a book called A Clockwork Orange. It's, of course, better than the book, and there are, of course, added scenes and such. It's really quite interesting, and, unfortunately for Burgess, probbly the only book anyone will remember by him when he's dead.

    Trying not to feed the troll:


  • "A Clockwork Orange. It's, of course, better than the book"

    Err, sorry, better than the movie.

    Doh. Is that freud talking to me?
  • "What people need to teach the next generation of game makers is dramatic construct and basic fictional writing abilities, "

    I don't know if that's possible. A lot of people don't want that, and a lot of people who think they can, well, can't. I've seen this a lot. People (in general) take 200 or 300 level Creative Writing workshop type courses and think they can write. It's more than simple grammar and punctuation (though the basics of writing are important). It's passion.

    I don't have a passion for programming. I do it when I need something, otherwise I avoid it. I write because I love it. I make video-game levels because I love that, too.

    Maybe it's just me, as a writer, but programmers might want to stick to programming and writers stick to their field.

    Half-life and it's add on was a great game, but I think it's because of the process they used to create it (a lot of brainstorming in groups and so on, there was an article on a gaming page somewhere that had all that information.) If one person is sufficiantly talented, then he or she could guide a team to make a game as good as half life (doing what it does). This is part of why id software works so well, because it's centered around Carmack.

    Even if the others give boatloads of support to the game as well, the big thing about id is their engines and pure adrenaline gaming. Unreal has something similar (though, IMO is very tedious because there isn't really a goal, just "Survive").

    That is why Duke3d (okay, the plot was lacking, but it had plenty of "other" stuff) or Half-life were good games, there was so much more. Quake(s) and Doom(s) were good for the same reasons as a Stallone or Swarzenegger flick.

    Should id hire a writer? I'm biased, but I say "yes," if they ever make a single player game again.

    If not, they should avoid bothering with a story at all, I think what they did with Q3A was cheesy.

    Of course, Half-Life looks rather dated now. I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I think you're wrong when you say that we don't need better engine's. I want to see every petal of a flower, and then I want to look off the balcony at a town-square.

    And I've seen engines that do that. And something like thhat is what I want to design for.

    insommnia, please release me:
  • "...and human kinetics."

    An imaginary pseudo-discipline, no doubt. I've never heard of it. Physics is the same regardless of the organism to which force is applied.

    Think again. Ever watched a human being walk? It's a very distinctive sort of motion. Now watch characters in Quake-style games, or amateur animation. Doesn't look like a real human's motion, does it? That's what human kinetics deals with.

    ------
  • __HOT__ Soac. Majors!! Yup... happens to all of us.. you know we walk into that Intro level Soac/Humanities/Psych class and what do we see... HOT female students!!! There is a sight for sore eyes (from hours of Fraggin on UT and Q3)

    I am pretty sure thats what got this guy all pissed!!!
  • They have to watch "Full Metal Jacket [imdb.com]"

    "Guy 1: Ever shoot women and children?
    Guy 2: Sometimes.. I try not to.
    Guy 1: How could you?
    Guy 2: It's not hard. You just don't lead them so much.    "

    Just replace "women and children" with "newbies"

    >:-)
    ---
  • Yep. DigiPen [digipen.com]. Sponsored by Nintendo.
    --
    The other side is crowded. The dead have nowhere to go.
  • This is just hit me. There are higher levels than B.A., so why not adjust the scrolls accordingly?

    There should be an:
    'Excellent!' on your diploma if you move on after getting your B.A. and receive your Masters.

    Then, if you take it further and get your Ph.D. in game design, the scroll should further read: 'Impressive!'.

    However, if you fail out of college, you'd simply receive a 'Humiliation!'. How embarrassing that would be, eh?

    Hacksworth
  • No. Nowhere near enough said. The novel was written by Anthony Burgess. Some years later, Mr. Kubrick made a disappointing movie of the same title, loosely based on the novel. Read the novel. It's worth it. It's a shame you've seen the movie first, because that always spoils novels, but you can't have everything.

    Furthermore, most of Kubrick's movies were unspectacular.

    Like Eyes Wide Shut which sorry to say I didn't see for I had seen enough on TV. Two things I can bet you: Kidman outperformed Cruise and it was a sensationalized version of what really happens to people in those situations. From my IRC experiences of that nature (observing mind you), for the most part everyone just wants to be part of the club. Either it's a flood of fileserver ads, a flood of "I'm in the room message me", or if you get lucky and people are actually talking you see a flood of morons getting removed occasionally. Only happens on Tuesdays.

    Dr. Strangelove is a landmark and Full Metal Jacket is very, very good, but the man as fallible as anyone.

    Did you catch the FMJ references in Saving Private Ryan?

    Nabokov spoke well of Kubrick's Lolita but I haven't seen it, nor do I plan to. It would spoil the book, you know?

    See it just to thank Showtime for having the balls.

    Nothing of the kind, absolutely nothing of the kind. Read it before you shoot your mouth off. It is primarily a meditation on the question of moral choice, with some satirical social commentary thrown in for variety, illustration, and some rare comic relief.

    would imagine that you'd recognize certain parts of it from your own experience.

    Sure who wouldn't we live on earth don't we?

    Look, it hurts when a nice trope like that goes unnoticed

    Okay I'll give you that.

    so I'll have to spell it out: In Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange, the narrator, a young thug, is subjected to a treatment which leaves him with a conditioned reflex of vomiting in the presence of certain stimuli. The overt subject matter of novel is Pavlovian conditioning for the purpose of social control. The post to which I responded mentioned vomiting in the presence of Christians. I took the ball and ran with it. I was hoping somebody had read the book, or at least seen the movie. So much for hopes.

    I got the point about the vomiting. The fact is that there was plenty else to vomit on in that post he vomited on.

    It's a repulsive book,

    Basic instinctual reaction to the truth.

    In my case, and in the case of the Christian wacko I was impersonating, it's a basic instinctual reaction to rape, murder, and the extremely horrifying scenes in which Alex, the narrator, is
    subjected to his conditioning. Okay?


    Okay nice impersonation. My post was to your wacko and to things you or he snipped out in the post preceeding the one I'm writing here.
    I picked on repulsive because I got the impression it was only the rape and murder you found repulsive and not the Pavlovian experiment. I was born in a Communist country. The mind bending stuff is what makes me want to spew.

    You're out of your mind.

    Look around. Schools are faking scores to get funding. Tell me I'm wrong. Maybe I come from a different perspective. Sure it's a repulsive movie/book. I just find the loss of education, and all the mind fucking etc. much more repulsive.
  • That was a cocky, off-the-cuff reaction, for which I (again :) apologize. I'm not at all familiar with the theories you were discussing, and I should have kept my mouth shut.

    It's what the Constitution has setup to protect itself. The Legislative branch, Executive branch, and Judicial branches have no Right cannot destroy or overpower the Rights of the others.

    It's the classic demon frozen in a crystal story that is the theme to a heck of a lot of MUDs and RPGs.
  • Game design covers every aspect of the system. It is the same as studying the evolution of Greek systems of philosophy and Roman innovations in organization networking efficiency and planning. Where studying that teaches you great deal about their culture, game design teaches you a great deal about computing from database design to 3-D imaging which as most of the golry days fucks so far don't recognize leads to better surgical equipment for dealing with transplant for say someonme who has muscular dystrophy.
  • See my other post. Nuff said.
  • That is their assigned role. I did not establish the Law, I merely seek to obey it as best I can. I expect the same from others.

    Establishment butt kissing ape :)

    I can only assume that you are a homosexual, in which case women would hardly matter to you, would they? Nevertheless, it may seem "unfortunate" to you that women were not made to be men, but it is a simple, obvious fact and there is nothing you
    can do about it.

    I'll be damned... he veered off the topic into his own overbloown ego void. If this guy had a smidgeon of an ego of self-respect, hell would freeze over.

    There is no "inequality" here, either. Do you rave about inequality when a dwarf is not permitted to play professional football? Why not? Because that role is not within his capabilities, and it would be absurd to suggest otherwise. Indeed, you'd be doing him no favors by forcing him to take on a role which he is utterly unequipped to fulfill.

    I suppose that's why the local swordfighting #2 player is a woman. God you need to be returned to your cave.

    So it is with women: I support their freedom and their right to a decent, satisfying life by fighting against those who would force them to take on roles in which they could never succeed.

    Buddy you need to get off those drugs they give out at the retreats.

    My masculinity is hardly threatened by the Law of my Creator. Is yours? Had you any masculinity to begin with, I would take that to be the case.

    The fuhrer has spoken everyone laugh now. What a dildo...
  • excuse me while i puke
    Please do in honor of multicelled organisms. We all are grateful for your gesture.

    Okay... time to fry this bitch.

    I'm intrigued, not to say amused, by the fact that you've been so thoroughly conditioned by your secular humanist "priests".

    You must have a 2 bit brain. Everything is a promotion to you people. No wonder you fall for it.

    Have you ever read a novel called A Clockwork Orange?

    Yes. Kubric rules. Nuff said. Incidentally Clockwork Orange was a rant against everyone, not a bible thumping pamphlet to the salvation that doesn't await your arrival. Promotion again. Boy this is easy.

    I would imagine that you'd recognize certain parts of it from your own experience.

    Sure who wouldn't we live on earth don't we? Reminds me of a psychic ad where some fraud tells her listener that she is creative. Who isn't? Everyone has a soul. (Duh! Your soul is you.) Everyone likes to build something even ppl who'd rather please an audience than create. You can't get away from it.

    It's a repulsive book,

    Basic instinctual reaction to the truth. And you were talking about the truth a few posts ago.

    But an instructive one in that it outlines out a large part of the leftist social-control agenda.

    I get it. It's the advertisement stupid. Got it. Mkay... @#@$#@$#!!!

    Now about those leftists in robes at the prisons giving Bilblical Guidance and leading the experiment. Boy you really need your head descrambled. Read the book again.

    It was written back in the early 1960's, before any of these things has been implemented. They were still learning important lessons from the North Koreans back then, and also from the Chinese. Fifty thousand young Americans died in Vietnam, merely as a cover for providing political prisoner "guinea pigs" to the mind-control masters employed by Ho Chi Minh. They did their work, our observers learned their techniques, and the human "failures" of those "experiments" beg for change on every sidewalk in the nation. The successes are another matter; several virtually robotic "moles" have found their way high into the government, and one is even running for president. You can recognize them by their lifeless eyes and stiff movements. One of the "observers", who spent five months in Vietnam learning techniques, was assigned the role of "maintaining" the conditioning of our so-called "president". The "observer" himself appears to have been subjected to the treatment also, judging from his wooden and mechanical behavior. That's only natural; the powers running the show want some "insurance". They'd never give a free man that kind of responsibility.


    Sure sure and right-wing free conservatives are going to save the world from left-wing liberals. Go home Nazi.

    And you are telling me that you've been an "experiment" yourself, programmed with degenerate peristaltic reflexes in response to the Christian religion. I haven't seen such a clear case before, but I suppose I always knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. As their power wanes, they paradoxically grow less cautious and more overt. It seems to be a progressive degenerative weakness in their leadership, and it bodes well for the future success of the resistance against their plans.

    Uhh you suck. The simple truth versus a long winded inversion of an otherwise true conspiracy.
    If you want to see what's really sucking the blood out of this country, read Trilateralism. It's a book about the reversal of the trilateral deadlock in the separation of powers in world affairs.
    The same way the the three way power structure keeps things in check in the US, the reversal is destroying education, democracy and free speech in world affairs.

    Excuse me while I puke. :)

  • Move along netizens. Some fool is masturbating. Nothing to see here.
  • You know, if you want to correct someone, don't do it as an anonymous coward. You can't really get a point across if post w/ AC.

    Also, don't tell people how/what to moderate, they can handle it.
  • Look at the variety of gaming that is done for PCs beyond what you said. You mentioned FPS and sports games -- but those are sold for the console markets too. Instead, look at the intense diversity of games we have: Sim-Games like SimCity, multi-player strategy games like C&C and Starcraft, massively multiplayer MUDs (graphical and text-based), simple but beautiful games like Deer Hunter, text-based games like NetHack (and its cousins), problem-solving games like Myst, and much more.

    My point is: don't think there is no innovation in gaming because the top sellers are all FPS and sports games. People come out with new PC games every fricking day -- I am glad the platform is still around! (btw, I am looking forward to Daikatana when it comes out... very soon, check out the demo [eidosinteractive.com]!)
  • I hope the genre doesnt die. It would be like having a degree in PacMan..
    Doesnt being a tad too specialized frighten them? The industry changes too fast to learn toolsets, but arent what they are learning be better applied on the job?
    good luck to them all
    --jay
  • What the hell was all that about?
  • He is making sense. You on the other hand are talking so much shit your mouth looks like an asshole.

    I lead my life by two rules:
    1. Be nice to people
    2. Don't kill people

    Beyond that it's a matter of personal judgement.
  • I'd give this a score of -1: Stick up ass.
  • Sorry, I've read too many posts by an ac that prattles on about the evils of everything. That last paragraph sounded too much like him/her/it
  • Perhaps rules was too strong of a word, guidelines is more appropriate.

    For an atheist, there is no incentive to live that way, no rewards at all

    Children need incentives and rewards for decent behavior, I simply expect it from adults.
  • ...or a lawyer-in-training. Mark my words, someday slashdot will become the testing grounds for the next generation of moles, drones, and other strange animal life-forms. You scare me very hardcore in your *rabid* desire to advance your ability to control and manipuate the thoughts of others through violent (abstractly, anyway) coercive technique. Plus I am envious of you apparently copious free time: you have no right to balk at any Russian novelist when you posses such wealth.

    Incidentally, maybe you should try the comedy circuit, if youve got the cajones. If you do care about the Fate Of The Glorious Union Builded By Our Forefathers Who Were Direct Descendants of the Archangel Gabriel, it could be interesting.

    PS--Pikachu is the one and only prophet of the true religion. And his god is a jealous god, who is also vengeful and in control of anime-dubbing. So I'd watch out if I were you...

  • Be that as it may, He did, and there's nothing we can do about it. Do you also disapprove of gravity? Would you prefer water that isn't wet? Well, it's beyond your control. You can't change these things.

    You might be surprised what we are capable of changing...in, perhaps, a few short decades, human nature itself will likely be within our grasp. Maybe even within the safe boundaries of our wisdom. Assuming that you are correct (that women, by divide decree or the benefits afforded by the evolution of specialization), one can rebel against such things if one does not approve of them. People do that all the time Futility is not the question: the call of moral absolutes (which you seem to be rather in favor of) is. Would you stop struggling against the prevalence of murder if you became convinced that the continued existence of this evil was as inevitable as gravity (which the doctrine of human im,perfectibilty and orginal sin shouold tell you, since you appear to be some flavor of Christian).

    IMHO, such a struggle against absolutes/the infinite/the unbeatable is what defines us as human and makes the human struggle worthwhile.

    Read _The_Brothers_Karamazov_. It was, of course, written by a rather intelligent Christian who entertained the idea of a rebellion against such absolutes (imposed by a creator, nonetheless! Aiiee! The horror! The humanity!), and found the proposal easy to understand and hard (read:ultimately impossible) to refute. REALLY: read it. You will thank me. Unless, of course, it proves too much of a threat to your antiquated ideas and shoddy reasoning...then youll really thank me.

  • I think I got myself one too many of those damn things...I wonder if someone has developed an operation of some sort? Wait, whats that you say? Lobotomy? Religious indoctrination from birth and hypersaturation with fundamentalist media? A triple dose of Rush Limbaugh??

    Thanks. Ill get right on that

    Forward the movement of ridiculousness-highlighting!!!

  • T_O_O M_U_C_H!!!

    point made!!! There arent enough people here who agree with the ideas being ridiculed to actually produce a lasting effect!! Choose another media or forum!! (Ill be plenty happy to suggest a few...they should be easy pickings for you)

  • Well the title said "How about a BA in Quake?" or something similar, so I guess we cant blame /. for the headline.
  • Oi! I think that's a little TOO far. I mean really, with a program like that, our future games will be totally addicting, and appeal to every sense we have (except that common one). -and be so bloated with bad code, it will make M$ complain. Forget it. Teach me algorithms! Teach me Assembly optimizations! teach me how to run the machine with my bare hands (we don't need no steenkin OS). Then I will posess the knowledge to pick up game programming, and make it blindingly fast. Besides that, what else will these kids be able to do? "I'd like to work for your company as a DB manager, and I think my Quake skills give me just the edge you need to blow your competition into huge blood soaked chunks of dead flesh..." uh, no.
  • I had a friend I knew way back when dos was a huge thing (dos1.0 -2.0) and there was a game on it called load runner my friend got into this game and learned how to change the parmeters of the game and do lots of neat things with it. I never got in to it as heavily probably should have he's a venture capitlist in Cailf and all of this because he wanted to change the way a game worked. The course may seem ridiculos to some but if you look at it it is a way to help them learn in a fun way. Maybe the ideas they use for assignments in the class don't seem like much it's the technique of using those ideas that will help them in a career oriented enviroment.
  • Look, too bad you didn't get accepted, but you don't need to go on about it.

    Get over it.

    --
    --

  • A "conservative," by definition, wants to "conserve" the status quo.

    Not quite. All the conservatives on the late 1990's want everything but the status quo. President Reagan hard wanted to keep the nation at it's status quo deadlock with Communism or economic hardship. Read about his speech at the Brandenburg gate, the famous, "Mr. Gorbachev open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" line. That was a battle between Reagan and his speech writers and the NSA begging him to leave things at the status quo, don't piss off the Soviets.

    The status quo changes throughout history, oddly enough. No one group is purely for the status quo. We just happen to live in a time when things need changing. Conservitism is more about restoring the idea, dating back to the late 1700's, that the government should do only as little as needed, and leave the states to do the rest.

    Take Roe vs Wade, conservatives don't just say, "Make all abortions illegal," but instead revert it to the states to decide. Or what sort of flags are flown over a state capitol, Bush, McCain, et al are lambasted for "not making up their mind" on the issue, when the one correct answer when you keep the Constitution in mind, is "it's up to the state to decide." If, as Mr. Gore stated a few weeks ago, "over 80% of the people" in South Carolina are against it, I don't understand how they elect state assemblymen that haven't torn it down by now. Or education, get the federal governemetn (and NEA) out of it and give it back to the state and local levels. The federal governement can oversee it, make sure kids are taught, but not to the point of, "You must teach X, Y, Z or else no money for you!"

    I guess Conservatism is most about conserving those ideals that got this country started in the first place, a very simple federal governement, all men are created equal, all that nonsense. There has been bumps in the road along the way, we learn from our mistakes, but one day we'll get it right.

  • uhhh . . . what? he's an american of african extraction. you're an american of european (predominantly german) extraction, i'm an american of mostly irish extraction

    Since the (current) theories say man was born of Africa, you can say we're all African-American. :) The point is at what point does a single national identity come about? Early man migrated from Africa, up around the Mediterranean Sea, into Europe. How are those early men that migrated through Russian into North America "Native Americans" while we who have lived here for several generations, some as early as the late 1600's, with little connection or knowledge of family in the old country, still European-Americans? Do other countries have such a system, are there Swedish-Englishmen or English-Germans?

    Perhaps we could put the "American" part first, to reflect "American with German/English/African ancestry."
  • Yeah that one piqued my curiosity, too. Typically any computer science degree is abstracted to the point where it will actually be useful for years and years after you graduate - the whole "We don't teach you C, we teach you how to program" philosophy. Yet by delving into disciplines like human kinetics they are moving away from this. Certainly knowledge in this field is useful for some sort of first-person sim, but who's to say that FPSs aren't a passing fad? Ten years ago they would have been teaching things like writing a software texture renderer or sprite animation. Those are practically dinosaurs now, and if you'd been trained in them you'd be back in school by now. I'm curious if they will be able to tailor this degree so that it's dynamic enough to still be useful a couple years of of college, considering that games are pretty much the only field of software that actually innovates and pushes the technological limits anymore.

    --
  • This is a true troll in the grand Kiboesque tradition! Keep it up, this is much better quality than the idiots we see on here at other times.

  • Degree? (Score:2)

    by Zoid ( 8837 )
    So, how do I get an honorary degree in Quake or modification design and implementation? :)
  • OK... there are lots of problems with this... The one that affected me when I was in Computer Science was the total lack of Female bodies in my classes.

    This can only get worse in a degree program that focuses on gaming. So what's a geek to do? Transfer to Geography. Well not quite Geography. I'm now in the second year of a 4 year degree in Media, Information, Technoculture and Geography, and I'm happy to say that the ratio if guys to girls is much better. What is a geek doing in Media and Geography?

    Its all about the information. Media and Information science is about who controls the information and where its at. Its a new program at the University of Western Ontario.

    Why Geography? I like flight sims. ;-)

    GIS (Geographical Information Systems) is one of the most data intensive applications there is. Its all about crunching big numbers and making sense of them.

    The 4 years you spend at University will be the one time in your life when you will be surrounded by people your own age of the opposite gender. Why waste by taking courses with other male geeks, where there is so much geekyness in so many other fields? Open your mind... Explore the possibilities... (Try a Marijuana Cookie... ) =)

    Link to Media, Information, Technoculture [fims.uwo.ca]

  • wavefront is very expensive. we used to have to license that stuff while I was a sys admin at a multimedia development department at a university. i can't imagine what the costs are for a commercial license.
  • What would the Quake source code (in C) teach students? How to program in C? Well, that would be silly (for obvious reasons of complexity). How to program? No, most universities are teaching intro programming with object-oriented languages like C++ and Java now. Maybe how to program Quake? Yeah, that's about all I could think of.

    Seriously, you couldn't cover the entire depth of a complex system like Quake in one semester. Could you do it in two? You'd still be pressed. And the individual aspects of the game (skin modelling) would be better taught with applications and systems that were built for doing just that, not ones that do it out of incidence for appearance like quake.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Actually, if you read the entire /. comment, that was mentioned. How is it misleading to state exactly what the story is about?

    As you might expect, the coursework is (an interdisciplinary approach to) designing and coding games, not playing them.

    Doesn't sound misleading to me... I thought it was a pretty funny headline.

  • $1 million dollars of something that can be duplicated for 0.05% (1/2000) of its selling price makes for a pretty nice tax deduction. It's like printing money.
  • Alias/Wavefront is very high-end 3D-graphics modelling/rendering software. It's used for stuff like special effects for films. The article is incorrect when it says Alias is a 'game maker'. Licences for their software are extremely expensive, it's not something you'd run on your PC at home, it's more the kind of software that's people buy SGI workstations for.

    Wish I'd had it when I was studying computer graphics at university.

    HH

    Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
  • There's a lot of extremely academic stuff that's required to produce games. Most games use 3D graphics. That requires some pretty advanced mathematics - I know, I've got a masters degree in it. How about user interface design? A good game with a crap user interface could be an unplayable flop. Colour theory - that's another important aspect of CG. How about programming? Game programmers have to be good to extract the last bit of performance from the hardware. This course seems to be designed to prepare people for a career, unlike your example of folkdancing (not that there's anything actually wrong with folkdancing), and it's a damn sight more academic than sociology IMHO.

    HH

    Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
  • The article mentions gaming-type courses also now being offered by MIT and NYU, but are there many (any?) instituitons that have been set up solely for gaming education. If memory serves me correctly there is a school recently opened in Brisbane, Australia for gaming education (requiring some sort of portfolio of previous work). So what about the US and elsewhere?
  • The one that affected me when I was in Computer Science was the total lack of Female bodies in my classes.
    This can only get worse in a degree program that focuses on gaming

    On the contrary, this program is trying to be interdisciplinary and should attract more people from different majors than a traditional CS type program. I can easily see English majors or Film majors taking a course or two in game design, direction or writing, and we should see good things come out of this. And there'll be more girls.

  • This is a great first step toward academic studies into a brand new field. As the article mentioned, it would be on par to where film and television was a while back.

    Gaming is a very significant field in the next step of human communication. Human communication started with simple gestures, growing in complexity to be more expressive, systematically "cleaned up" to provide more consistent meaning to the messages.

    We then got speech, words and writing. All significant advances in human communication. These were great, but bandwidth was low. The bandwidth limitation was due to geographic restrictions. You couldn't speak to millions of people around the world, because there were no means to do so.

    Then came the technology for telecommunication. We got phones, we got radios, we got television. Phones were relatively low bandwidth, while radio and television were relatively high bandwidth. Of course, we all know that the architecture of that was hierarchical in nature, as broadcast media are wont to be.

    We communicate to share ideas. But more importantly, we inherently want others to see our ideas, be influenced by our ideas, and become one of 'us'. This is the concept of memes, of course. Religion has very deep roots in the idea of memes. So do movies, tv shows, books, and more blatantly capitalistically, advertisement. They all want to sell you an idea, pass on the idea, and let you pass it on to yet more people. We are a people whose personality is defined by the memes that have infected us throughout the years with the (now) 'traditional' media.

    Gaming is one step further (much like the Internet is, but they are on different conceptual levels, so there's no comparing them). Gaming also spreads memes (good vs. evil, what is mean by good and what is meant by evil, etc.) Gaming takes it one step further than broadcast media like movies, etc., in that it is actually allowing you to train in a 'practical' application of the memes in question.

    To give you an idea of what I'm talking about: In many games, we are constantly trying to defeat an evil archvillan and his (usually of male gender) henchmen, who are bent on taking over the world, dominating the population, destroying the spirit of goodness, etc. Where there is actually a slight hint of plot and morality, this is the archetypical theme.

    It is no surprise, then, that these ideas often reflect historical governments and events. Now that we are living in a democracy, and (mostly) everyone sees it's good, then the games will depict anti-democratic ideas as evil.

    Games, then, are neat little workbooks that now only teach us how to think and act, but gives us the opportunity to practice. Of course, there are many more lessons being taught in these games, many of them involve something along the lines of 'practice makes perfect' or 'journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' kind of morals. These morals were taught in fables and stories. Now that we have computers and interactivity, games have increasingly taken on these roles.

    I think that in the future, games will become like storybooks of the past. In fact, it won't be that different than the book as depicted by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. So active academic pursuit of gaming will be crucial in the fields of humanities and communication. So this is a great first step. Don't fall into the trap of shallow assumption that this is not a serious thing. It's more serious than studying computer science (in that it is more interdisciplinary, and consequently cares about the sociological impacts).

  • That reminds me...has anyone tried writing or playing a computer simulation of the Quiddich game as described in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_? Seems like the 3-D aspects of the game would be ideal for Quake junkies...and if you miss the violence, we could always throw in a Basilisk or two :-)

    ~svoboda

  • Solution: take a minor, join a club, or add a second major. I graduated from UCI last year with a double major in computer science and drama. I met lots of girls in my other major, and I'm still dating one I met through a creative writing club.

    Find something else you're interested in, add a minor in it, and chances are there'll be more of a gender balance in that field.

  • Just like in a lot of other industries, the money drove out the creativity. There's more drama, creativity, and dignity in Nethack than in the ostentatious, 3-D accelerated pieces of fluff that come out now. The problem seems to be the same thing that hit the movie industry; design by focus group. Paradoxically the games have gotten less complex from a player's perspective as they get more so from a designer's viewpoint. Look how much they fit into Wasteland or Ultima V; instead of filling the CDs with 500 meg cut scenes I'd love to see a version of those old games with more modest graphics and a much bigger world to explore.
  • This may not apply in all situations, but I think in the past, the better programmers have not usually had the better education. Many of the best programmers in the past were either dropouts or didn't go to college at all (Gates/Allen, Wozniak). It happens more often than not where a software company brings in people with PhD's or whatever to design something really new and cool, and it ends up sucking because its either too slow (because the programmer does not know any of the speed hacks that somebody who's been programing since they were 13 might know), or the UI sucks (you can't create a good UI if you haven't used computers for long enough to know what a good UI is). This applies to all areas of programming, but there is one game that illustrates my point, unfortunately I cannot remember its name. Anyway, it used a pixel-volume engine, and was really cool and looked amazing, but unfortunately even my 500Mhz PIII and Voodoo 3 3k (both brand new when the game came out) could not get over 23 fps. I'm willing to bet that somebody focused on speed from the onset, and not doing a cool new engine could have accomplished the same thing, and had it run faster. But college learned people often are more interested in research, therefore they wind up with the 'new and cool' factor above the speed factor in their products.
  • This is not much different then when I was in college and they had course study and degrees in such things as "basket weaving" and "frisbee throwing" (I kid you not). &nbsp The frisbee throwing was related to physics...

    The point was to design an entire course of study (which included the "required" courses like humanities, social/behavioral sciences, writing, foreign languages, and physical/biological sciences + math) around that "theme".

    It might sound hokey on the surface but if gaming is a market, how else to do it? &nbsp I can see it including stuff like psychology, etc., whereby you need to understand human behavior quite a bit in order to design a game, or history, where you might want to focus on "epic" games with historical themes. &nbsp Of course the programming is a must as well...

    ;-)

  • Again, bad journalism by /. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:20AM (#1224334)
    Nice misleading story. Of course to report on things accurately, you'd have to investigate and read up first huh? At this point, Slashdot might be better off becoming a site for Press Releases.

  • Sponsored by... (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:07AM (#1224335) Homepage Journal
    "As a gesture of support for the UC program, game-maker Alias/Wavefront has donated $1 million in software."

    Either that's a lot of software or its very expensive. What kind of software? Are they wisely getting these students hooked and locked on their software? Its good when its free, but I hope they know the costs when there comes a time when they have to start paying for further use and productivity.

  • Re:Sponsored by... (Score:3)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @12:30PM (#1224336) Homepage Journal
    Stuff like Alias/Wavefront is very expensive. A EDA software company donated 4 licenses to our school... it was worth 1.2 million.

    When I was in engineering school, we used Orcad [orcad.com] to do our electronics layouts. At $4500 a copy, us students were too poor to take advantage of learning design techniques at home. It was a real shame, because with a good set of macros, I could bang out a circuit fast as I could dream about building it. Now that I'm out of school and no longer have access to the software, all those fun analog and microprocessor circuits that I designed [attaway.org] are useless. That is one of the reasons I no longer trust proprietary software.
  • Not to nitpick, but a programmer who learned how to program from an Algorithm viewpoint and had some sort of liberal arts education should be able to program anything. I think getting the quote from the 3DO (giggle) guy just confirms that this program is lame.

  • A good idea (Score:3)

    by mchale ( 104743 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:18AM (#1224338)
    Teaching to an area where there's a lot of interest is a good idea -- it makes the students want to learn. I don't know what level they're planning on starting at, but as someone who's played with Quake source, I can say that the C source is of reasonable complexity, enough so that a CS course could take advantage of it as a teaching tool fairly well. Add that to the opportunities working with modelling and skin design, and you could build a curriculum that offered a broad range of CS experiences. Kudos to UC Irvine! Matthew

  • Coding not the Problem (Score:4)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @07:21PM (#1224339) Homepage

    The issue here is that coding is not the shortcomings of most current games. Q3 looks incredible. It has great bots. It has no plot. It is the last of these statements which is its the greatest criticism.

    Carmack is a coding god but his games reflect what he enjoys. Simple shoot-em ups. He is the Swartzeneggar of gaming, looks pretty but poor content. This is what is running gaming into a rut.

    Half-Life was not a great game because the engine was incredible. It was great because it was immersive. It felt real, you could believe you were Gordon Freeman. It explained away some of the conventions of gaming, like health recharges, in a believable way. This and its AI is what made HL a great game.

    Games need better writing not better engines. Graphics and multimedia are part of this, a well made environment adds a lot to a game just as a poor one subtracts from it. Think of how crappy level design hinders a good engine, like in Twisted Metal 3 on PS. What people need to teach the next generation of game makers is dramatic construct and basic fictional writing abilities, not necessarily just coding which is actually a relatively small part of the total game design.

  • Read the fscking article.... (Score:4)

    by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @12:56PM (#1224340) Homepage Journal
    From the article:
    The program incorporates courses in a variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, graphic design and human kinetics. The goal is to create students who are not only able to code and design games but also have an understanding of the societal impact and significance of this $7 billion industry.

    IIRC the purpose of a college education is to provide a person with the skills required to succeed in the real world (i.e. workplace in one's future career). Currently gaming is pulling in almost as much money as Hollywood (the movie industry) yet most college computer science curriculums(sp?) act like it doesn't exist. On the other hand we see nothing wrong with film schools or colleges with curriculum emphasizing parts of of the cinematographic process including acting. People like you with their heads in the sand disgust me. Have you ever looked at the source code for Quake I or ever wondered how difficult a management process is involved in game development? After all isn't game development still software development?

    Why is a course exploring various aspects of the game development process and its ramifications to society as a whole suddenly a bad idea? Does the fact that the software being developed is primarily going to be used for entertainment purposes somehow make game development trivial...I guess with that reasoning all the work done from 1960s on ARPANET till today building the infrastructure, protocols and software that is the Internet is pretty trivial since most people who use the internet today do so to use chat rooms, view porn, browse the web etc.

    PS: The article makes no mention of Quake, this addition seems to have been made by the original poster for sensationalistic effect which has been achieved given your rant.

  • uh oh! (Score:4)

    by shred99 ( 153744 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:28AM (#1224341)
    the actual article on MSNBC says "... next fall, students at the University of California at Irvine can begin taking courses in the university's newly announced Interdisciplinary Gaming Studies Program. It's the first step toward a "major" in gaming."

    So, it isn't a major in quake but possibly in gaming...

  • Course Outline (Score:5)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @01:48PM (#1224342) Homepage
    All graduates of the program receive their diplomas from John Carmack.

    The Dean of the School is Thresh, and he will of course name the rest of Death Row his Associate Deans.

    The recommended course structure of this program is outlined below.

    Semester One
    • Right Hardware for the Job
    • Mouse Sensitivity I - An indepth look at Intellimouse
    • WASD vs. ESDF: An ergonomic approach
    • Space vs. Right Click: The Correct Way to Jump (Note: Fulfills humanities requirements due to extensive amount of debate)


    Semester Two
    • Mouse Sensitivity II - The Benefits of Everglide
    • History of Quake
    • Fragging I - An Introduction to Deathmatch (Professor: Thresh)
    • Bunny Hopping I (Professor: 3R337 H4X0r)


    Semester Three
    • QuakeSpeak: Taunts and Swears
    • Fragging II - An Introduction to CTF
    • Quake C: Make your own Mods
    • Being Cheap - An Introduction to Camping


    Semester Four
    • Art of Fragging: Mid-Air Frags and other Spontaneous Happenings
    • Advanced Deathmatch: Predicting Your Opponent
    • Sound as an Advantage
    • Bunny Hopping II: When Not to Use It


    Due to the newness of this program, other semesters have not been scheduled as of yet. However, courses to be offered include Advanced CTF, InstaGib: The Only Way to Frag, and more.

  • I wonder if they have a chair (Score:5)

    by Count Fragula ( 67767 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:12AM (#1224343)
    for that department...

    Well, I always knew I was preparing myself for some important post in life.

    QK104: Quake Linguistics. Topics will include study and morphology of native Quake player dialects, including such colloquialisms as "BFG, Owned, Frag" and others. Prerequisites: Q103, "Bindings" and Q102, "The Zen of 1337"
  • That is a misleading headline, to say the least. Though attempting to present this story humourlously, this is not along the lines of a college course in Klingon, Madonna Studies, or a Canadian University (I kid you not) that has "The Films of Keanu Reeves". What this sounds like is something that is long overdue and very, very necessary.

    Gaming is stagnating, and that's a fact. Innovation? Try EA SPORTS XXXXXXXX SEPTEMBER EDITION. Another Dune 2 clone. Another 3d shooter. I think that the game industry took a wrong turn at a certain point and for the right reasons but we're still having to deal with the fallout. Namely, when CD drives allowed massive (relatively) storage with muldimedia there was all this talk about synergy between the movie industry and gaming. The result was crap games with shit interactivity and horrid FMV. What should have been reaped from Hollywood was storytelling that is rigourously tested, strong characterization, and an attempt to be something more. 99% of movies are crap, yes, but the ones that get away and are something extraordinary are so special because of what an epiphany they represent. I feel gaming has come close but nowhere near having the emotional effect of the greatest movies. The games that are widely loved by the hardcore gamers are the ones that come closest to sports, (and that's what deatmatches are really) which cannot do this. There is, in my mind, an arena for games which want to do more. This is why Metal Gear Solid, say, impressed me from a design perspective so much. It was an action adventure game with a unique interface and play style, highly recognizable and differentiated characters, and an actual attempt to say something about the world - all within the confines of a game. I think a glance at Quake 3 will confirm that there is a marked difference between design and coding. I'm not slamming Q3, I'm a huge admirer, and am in awe of John Carmack and his talents, but I do not think Quake 3 is a brilliant work of immersive design. Granted, it aims for a different experience.

    One of the hardest things about the game industry is that cracking into designing, which I believe should be a specialized position, happens through moving up the ladder either as a coder or a play tester... And I'm sorry, but I just do not feel that coders (with the exception of Neal Stephenson) make great storytellers, nor the greatest human computer interaction gurus. It's about time designing was made a discipline of its own, and there was a way for people to get an overview of gaming and come to companies with some form of acceptable accreditation. The game designers I respect the most did not come from a traditional coding background, people like Warren Spector (who wrote novels and worked for TSR) or Rod Fung (who comes from a cinematography background)

    PC gaming is in for a big shock soon, undoubtedly, with the new generation of consoles and the simple fact is that the games that sell well are no longer real PC games but bargain Deer Hunting titles. That's a fact. There's amazing, ridiculous amounts of money floating around, with nothing to show for (COUGH COUGH ION STORM) and designer's reputations based on tenuous connections to a track record (COUGH COUGH JOHN ROMERO). Hopefully the establishment of such a course will make the gaming industry listen and change their ways, and we'll be better off for it. Oh, and BTW, Alias/Wavefront is amazingly expensive stuff. One of the best things about this course is that I can see students getting a chance to use the really high end industry strength apps without having to warez them. I do CG in my free time as a film student trying to learn tools, and recently pricing Maya - there's even a yearly license fee for student use. If as a student I was able to get my hands on motion capture utilities, a terrific sound recording studio, people interested in the same thing (unlike film school where there's like 2 people who want to make something that people would actually want to see and everyone else wants to make "art"), and access to some high end apps sounds blissful and serious to me.

  • This stuff is HARD (Score:5)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @06:59PM (#1224345) Homepage
    If they're serious about this, it will be a really tough curriculum. Courses like:
    • Internet for games TCP/IP in depth. Bandwidth and delay properties of the backbone, dialups, DSL, and cable modems. Voice over IP. Responsive interaction over variable-delay links despite packet loss. Bandwidth management strategies. Interaction between the net and the game. Synchronous and asychronous game updates. Players on different speed links. Server farm structure and organization for game servers. Network security. Game security issues. Examples of successful and unsuccessful Internet game projects.
    • Physics for games Dynamics of rigid bodies. Finite element analysis of flexible bodies. Friction. Articulated systems. Featherstone's algorithm. Collision detection. Ordinary differential equations. Stability of numerical solution methods for ODEs. Explicit and implicit methods. Constraint methods.
    • Graphics for games ...
    • AI for games...
    • Project management for games ...
    • Advanced project management for games Dealing with Hollywood. Managing artists, musicians, and actors. Fixed-schedule projects. Holiday-season ship date issues. Dealing with the platform vendor. Censorship and rating issues. Build vs. buy decisions.

    The real problem will be getting teachers competent to teach this stuff.

  • Just imagine... (Score:5)

    by AgentRavyn ( 142623 ) <frankalee.gmail@com> on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:13AM (#1224346)
    ...calling home and telling your folks that you're majoring in a computer game.
    ___________________________________________ _

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