Last night, I had the honor of attending the first meeting of the Game Programming advisory board for the Minnesota School of Business. Since I’m neither a game programmer, nor in the position to be hiring game programmers any time soon, I feared that I would be greeted with hisses of “Board gamer! Table-topper! Poseur!” but the assembled group was as gracious as it was intelligent and eclectic.
We had a motion capture specialist, an animator/designer/writer, a physicist who teaches programming, and the head of the Johnson Center for Virtual Reality, as well as a handful of folks from the MSB itself. It was cool just to be in the same room with such a pack of sharp cookies.
And I was able to hold my own. While I couldn’t address whether students would be better served by learning C++ or Flash programming, I was able to contribute to the more general discussion of where games are going, and what kinds of skills will help students get ahead when we get there.
Good stuff. Even when it’s -20 windchill, it’s nice to get out and chat with others in the field.
