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Game Studies and Interdisciplinary Skills

When you plan to work for games, whether it will be a Designer, Programmer, Concept Artist or any of the many there are available, you will find that each field will have to communicate to the other in some way. As Espen Aarseth said "...the key is interdisciplinary; the game industry is based on teamwork, and workers must be able to communicate ideas across disciplinary boundaries and traditions."(Aarseth, Game Studies: What is it Good For?, 2005, p 5). So Game Studies helps the idea that to communicate across the field of game developing there is a lot more beneath the surface then just polygons and code. For example you may be a fantastic concept artist creating characters of awesome detail but if you don't realise that having one hundred earrings on the ogre you just finished drawing might be unreasonable on the 3d artists to create plus the limitations on computers might make you suddenly out of a job.

While games today are getting better looking as the years advance, the story's seem to be lacking and there seem to be less groundbreaking games then there were in the late 80's and early 90's. It may be becuase everyone is desensitized from the same game play that has been giving to us over and over again. As Espen Aarseth elegantly said "...game play structures are the same as two decades ago. While the rubber is superior and the spokes definitively more shiny, the shape of the wheel is basically unchanged."(Aarseth, Game Studies: What is it Good For?, 2005, p 5). So Game studies helps break out of the usualy niche that everyone gets stuck in, helps think outside the box and realise that games aren't limited to just video games but to board games, card games, role playing games and many more that I have only recently found out about. It makes you realise that the is a fundamentally thing in common about all these game genres and that is people enjoy them and play them to have fun, whether it is to socialise or the relax blowing things up the main goal is the have fun.