泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Mechanized man and humanized AI

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Mechanized man and humanized AI

 

Recently, I started to give a lecture on game design to students majoring in video games at a university. I was so excited for the new classes that my heart was pounding. Of course, it was not a new experience for me and I also have given special lectures several times. However, this opportunity seemed very significant for me because I was an ineffectual teacher ten years ago and when it comes to the occasional lectures since then, they were mostly about not game design but investment-related topics. So I started the new semester promising myself to make my lectures helpful and valuable for all educatees.

 

Frankly speaking, the first few times of lessons were unpleasant, contrary to my expectations. I guess that student's low levels of understanding content ranked at the top of the main causes.

 

A tutee who wants to write a video game story has never read The Lord of the Rings even though he said that he is a big fan of fantasy novels and another student who likes reading martial arts novels and seemed interested in RPG game design didn't even know that the sexagenary cycle - ganzhi - is a cycle of sixty terms. Only a few in dozens of students in the classroom read Greek and Roman mythology and almost everyone didn't know about inflation in a virtual economy. They were lack of knowledge not only about the culture of Christianity but also about Korean history. I don't think that every game developer should understand all of these. However, I felt sorry about the undergraduate because they are future content designers.

 

Of course, in my opinion, most of the pupils were very intelligent. Some of them who were familiar with practical business details seemed to be ready to work in the field being faithful to their roles for a company. I only had the impression that practical affairs-centered education tended to focus on creating mechanical workers in the field. They will hardly be team leaders or producers who come up with a revolutionary idea to design a creative video game far beyond just fulfilling their job like accessory equipment. I am greatly concerned about humanities-lacked curriculums for most game-related studies.

 

I mentioned artificial intelligence which created a language to communicate with its counterpart. Human is mechanized and the machine is humanized more and more. Unless the cramming method of public education is changed in the collage, humanized AI may think more creatively than people before long. I finish this article promising myself to stick to the basics in my lectures.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui