GDC 2002 to feature academic summit

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has announced that the upcoming 2002 Game Developers Conference (GDC) will feature an academic summit made up of leading game developers and academics. The summit will take place during the first two days of the conference, on March 19-20, 2002. It is intended to give educators and game developers a forum in which to discuss university research initiatives, build relationships between the game industry and universities, and help develop game-related curricula.

The academic summit will be hosted by the IGDA's education committee and is sponsored in part by Microsoft Research. The two-day event will include lectures, case studies, and panel discussions.

"The current ranks of game developers, for the most part, are self-taught experts or have formal training only in computer programming and graphic design," said Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. "As games are emerging as one of the significant entertainment media for the 21st century, new kinds of expertise are needed, including familiarity with the basic vocabulary of visual storytelling and a grasp of the social dynamics around gameplay. We are responding at a time when a growing number of students start out with the explicit goal of breaking into the games industry."

The following industry and academic speakers will take part in the summit:

-- John Buchanon, Electronic Arts Canada
-- Bill Buxton, Alias Wavefront
-- Doug Church, freelance game developer
-- Claude Comair, DigiPen Institute of Technology
-- Jason Della Rocca, International Game Developers Association
-- Mark DeLoura, Sony Computer Entertainment America
-- Graeme Devine, id Software
-- Matthew Ford, Microsoft Games Group
-- Randy Hinrichs, Microsoft Research
-- Ian Horswill, Northwestern University
-- Robin Hunicke, Northwestern University
-- Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-- John Laird, University of Michigan
-- Julie Liss, Angel Studios
-- Don Marinelli, Carnegie Mellon University
-- Janet Murray, Georgia Institute of Technology
-- Ray Muzyka, BioWare Corp.
-- Rob Nideffer, University of California, Irvine
-- Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University
-- Celia Pearce, University of California, Irvine
-- Marc Prensky, Games2train.com
-- Simon Redmon, Liverpool John Moores University
-- Andi Smithers, The Collective
-- Warren Spector, Ion Storm Austin
-- Jeferson Valadares, Jynx Playware
-- Will Wright, Maxis
-- Gino Yu, Hong Kong Polytechnic
-- Eric Zimmerman, GameLab

For more information about the 2002 GDC or the academic summit, visit the official IGDA Web site.