The game enabled an online community to grow, crowdsourcing solutions to tricky problems and producing a relatively small but very highly skilled group of experts in protein structure. Such a model for building expertise relevant to real scientific research is innovative and rare, and speaks to the potential power of harnessing games for science and science communication. The second speaker, Kim Blake of Blitz Games Studios, approached the session from a very different perspective. The computer game industry requires programmers and designers with strong maths and physics backgrounds. While physics in games is different from reality, creating today’s ever more complex virtual environments is technically challenging and draws on a wide range of skills. Despite this, Blake said, there is a discrepancy between what the gaming industry needs and the current level of tertiary training. Many maths, physics and computer science graduates, and even teachers and students at secondary school level, are unaware of the recruitment demands and pathways available in the game industry. The skills are complementary to, or even fall within, classic Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) disciplines, but there is a common misconception that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) studies is the best pathway to take to enter the industry. The reason STEM skills are needed, Blake argued, is that ICT trains students to use software and code, but not to be creative and make things from the ground up. The fundamental approach of science is creative and ideas-based, which is more valuable when innovating and devising games and game engines. What is needed, amongst other approaches is greater awareness of the existing Skillset accreditation system for games-related courses, to ensure the gap between the industry’s needs and the actual courses available is closed.
Ultimately, Blake said, what is needed is for a coalition of interested parties to build capacity for excellence in computer game design. Science communicators have a role, in making the role of STEM in such a major industry more clear and accessible to the public. A perceived division between the technical skills (programming, maths) and the creative skills (art and aesthetics) is hindering the industry and needs to be addressed. Science actually spans this divide if taught well. STEAM is the way forward. The question and answer session was broad-ranging and touched on issues from the technical to the ideological. One early question cast doubt on the ability of games with a scientific theme to actually communicate something meaningful. After all, once game mechanics are learned, the ‘flavour’ can fall away as the player just attempts to complete objectives. Henson acknowledged this, but pointed out that no game will be right for every audience. For any game, the audience and objectives must be considered, and any educational/scientific component must be judged against these. There’s no point having brilliant science if the game fails as a game. After some discussions of the difficulty of getting more women involved in game programming, the session concluded with a return to the broad question: can games really be genuine learning tools? Henson thinks it’s possible, but at different degrees. Small, online games have a casual audience, but are cheap and have broad reach. Any game requires learning, and therefore has scope to include science communication. Blake said that ‘serious games’ is a concept which could be sold much more successfully, and needs to escape the stigma of badly designed educational games. “Foldit”: Protein folding game. Tests genuine scientific hypothesis - human strategy would be better than computer #SCC2011