Yesterday Miyamoto. Tomorrow Dalí?

Mateas suggests that video games today are representative of the notion of a 21st century "total art," just as opera was in the past. Machinima, it could be argued, is that much closer, perhaps. The shopping list of lessons academia teaches us about the future of games goes something like this: Unless imagination is unleashed, innovation will not flourish. Game developers should embrace the relatively short history of electronic games to dissect its parts. Languages should be created for design. Genres need expanding. Narrative and open-world environments with true freedom of movement and plenty of activity should replace wandering aimlessly until we succumb to scripted choice points and return to where we started. Our experts also teach that we think a lot harder about our gameplay experiences than we realize or care to think. Games could benefit from strong narratives. Gameplay should always be meaningful but not necessarily complex.

The question "Are games art, or are games literature?" is easily translated out of the academic and into layman's terms, "Are games graphics, or are games story?" Are games narrative, or are games simulation? Or are they something wholly different and as of yet undiscovered?

When asked to select one person unrelated to the field of games--famous or not, dead or alive--for a stint as a game developer, Murray chose Charles Dickens, "because [of] the creation of a complicated interconnected world, animating every corner of it, and winding things up and letting them play out together. I think he would have been a game developer." Murray says she also thinks Dickens would have been a filmmaker in 1940.

WarioWare, for the Game Boy Advance.

Frasca thinks that almost any major jazz musician would make for a good game developer but notes that "Miles Davis, The Game" would be "cool." "Jazz is about improvisation and about being playful," he says. "The closest thing that I have seen in games so far is the fantastic WarioWare. It is the gaming equivalent to Fantasia, the celebration of a genre that is beginning to be of true importance in people's everyday lives."

Lowood takes the question to the political arena and suggests Bill Clinton because "...political simulation, which was a pretty effective area in the early '80s, is just dead as a game genre." To Lowood, Frasca's Dean for Iowa game was more of a "job that was given to him by a political campaign" than a political simulation. "I was thinking of Clinton kind of as a shorthand for getting some politician involved in designing games," Lowood elaborates. "Let's do a really interesting simulation of politics using somebody who knows it at a really deep level. To get somebody who really knows politics involved in a political game would be kind of fun."

Alan Turing is Mateas' choice. "Turing is, of course, renowned as one of the founders of computer science for his theoretical development of the Turing Machine, as well as for publishing one of the most seminal early articles on AI with his proposal for the Turing Test. Turing had a playful, nonconformist personality and would have loved computer games," Mateas suggests. Mateas believes Turing saw the computer as a tool for "procedural representation and not merely as a number cruncher," which was evidenced by his work in developing some of the "earliest ALife and neural net models," Mateas explains. "The Father of Computer Science would see computer games not as a frivolous application of computation, but, rather, as raising deeply interesting fundamental questions." Turning would love The Sims, according to Mateas, along with any game that "models complex behavior, including characters and deeply interactive stories."

Perry first suggests Salvador Dalí. "I'm picturing the melting clocks, of course, but [I'm] also hearing in my head his great quote: 'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.'" "I can imagine that sort of imagination coming to bear on virtual playgrounds." Similarly, Perry sees René Magritte and M.C. Escher in the "mind-bending game world" capacity.

The narratologist in Perry escapes--when he says he's thinking too much in terms of graphics--and offers writers William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Rudy Rucker, Issac Asimov, and Rod Serling for backup.

Mateas calls the question of game developer personalities an attempt to get to the art history of gaming. "I don't think we've developed the 'isms' yet," he says. When asked if academia might lure current game designers into game studies, Lowood expresses pessimism. "I think a lot of game designers will drop out as they see [the programs] as depending so much on certain vocabularies that they don't understand and that they view as a purely academic kinds of discourse. But it's just beginning, and there aren't many game designers that have formed their interest in games on an academic platform." Lowood does agree that it's possible for academics to gain credibility by working with the game community, even though the communities are so disparate.

That game development as a career choice has become more popular over the last decade suggests that it is possible that game studies will grow too. After all, game development hasn't historically always been the type of profession to draw people in droves. There was little glamour in the beginning. "Games were geek stuff," Mateas says. "Nowadays, there is sort of this rock-star lifestyle," he adds, before switching the comment back. "Well, not really [Laughs]. I talk to people at EA, and they're sort of hunched over their games with big bags under their eyes."

But times are changing. Game developers today have more tools, the support of academia--should they choose to use it--and a dedicated public that enthusiastically awaits their products. "Whether you're living that rock-star lifestyle or not," Mateas says, "it's kind of hip to be a game designer now. The early pioneers were doing it purely out of love, because it's not like they were getting a lot of societal affirmation." Game theory professors aren't doing too badly either.