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Class in the Spotlight
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Brathwaite shares expertise, innovations at conference
 Photo by Dane Sponberg Brenda Brathwaite is speaking about an innovative teaching method she developed at SCAD at the annual Game Designers Conference in San Francisco. By Monique Bos Published: Friday, March 2, 2007 On March 1, Brenda Brathwaite embarks on what for most people would be a nightmare journey: a four-day car trip across the United States with her husband and their three children, all under age 7. And then, a few days later, they’ll do the return leg. Brathwaite, an interactive design and game development professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, isn’t daunted at all. In fact, she’s excited. “It’s pretty relaxing to drive in one direction, just drive,” she said. “My husband and I take turns, and I love driving. I think that helps.” The family’s destination is San Francisco, where she has been asked to speak at the Game Developers Conference March 5-9. In fact, Brathwaite, who also spoke at the 2005 and 2006 conferences, has been invited to speak four different times during the four-day 2007 event. She’ll be contributing to two roundtable discussions about adult content in video games, “Sex in Video Games: The Business End/Designing the Erotic.” She’ll also participate in a Case Blast, for which the International Game Designers Association has invited professors to share innovative teaching methods. Finally, she’s been asked to join other veteran game designers in “Accessibility Idol: Season Finale,” a session that focuses on developing games accessible to quadriplegic users. “It’s tremendously humbling,” Brathwaite said. “Being asked to speak once at GDC is amazing. Four times is just really overwhelming. It’s a really good opportunity for SCAD, too.” Her inclusion in the adult-content round tables is hardly surprising; she literally wrote the book — “Sex in Video Games,” published by Charles River Media in August 2006 — after initiating conversation on the topic at a 2005 GDC round table, “Sexuality in Games: What’s Appropriate?” Brathwaite’s interest in the subject stemmed from her own role as lead designer on “Playboy: The Mansion” from 2002-04. She developed the 2005 round table as a forum for game designers on all sides of the issue to share their thoughts and experiences, and she quickly discovered that although the topic was hot, there was no cohesive community for game designers who worked with adult content. As a result, she founded and serves as chair of the IGDA’s Sex Special Interest Group, www.igda.org/sex, for which she also writes a blog. In addition, Brathwaite is lending her expertise in adult content to game designers at the University of Connecticut. “They’re developing a safer-sex video game that targets at-risk urban youth,” she said. “The message is to help prevent STDs, AIDS and unwanted pregnancies.” The challenge is to integrate this content without alienating the target audience, and Brathwaite said she thinks a humorous approach is the best way to do that. “Fortunately, people have been studying the question of how to deliver this message for years and how to put it in the game in a passive way,” she said. “Sexual content and humor always work well together in a game. Serious sexual content rarely works.” Brathwaite — who has a collection of Playboy magazines dating back to 1964 — tends to thoroughly immerse herself in projects that interest her. One of her new passions is teaching, and she’ll share that with audiences at GDC as well. “Teaching game design is as fun as making games,” she said. “I love the creative energy in the classroom. I love working with talented students who want to learn about making games. I look forward to coming to work every day.” She’s developed an innovative strategy for teaching narrative to game designers, and she’ll present that during a Case Blast at the conference. “I basically do this narrative exercise where I put the students in a world, ask what they want to do and make up the rules as we go along,” she said. “It ends up being really crazy and fun.” She conceived of the idea for her Game Design Criticism and Analysis course, in which the curriculum focuses on rules of game play, or ludology, during the first half of the quarter and narrative during the second. Brathwaite planned the in-class game as a transition between the two halves of the course, but it’s grown into far more than that. “Originally it was supposed to be one class, just to introduce the principles,” she explained. “The students loved it, so I found ways to integrate it into all future lectures.” Brathwaite creates the ongoing structure of the game but allows students significant latitude, as most games do. “I start them in a particular place, but where to go and what to do is up to them,” she said. “I put them in problem situations. They ask questions like, ‘Do I have a weapon? Can I climb the wall? Is the door unlocked? What do I see?’ They have to roll a die to find out. It’s really open-ended.” The students play the game for a half hour to 45 minutes at the end of every class, she said. Then she takes issues or problems that arise during that session as the starting point for her next lecture. “It shows students the practical application of narrative exercises,” she said. “As a game designer, you never know where the characters are going to go, but somehow you have to keep it cohesive. It’s a great exercise for game designers.” It also challenges her, both as a professor and as a game designer, she said. The main character in this quarter’s game is a retired circus clown named Barbie Cruz — who is, and is played by, a man. Another student recently died and asked Brathwaite if he could become a zombie. She told him he’d have to roll two ones in a row, and he did — so now she’ll be incorporating a zombie into future storylines. “This is what happens when a game designer teaches!” she said. “It was very natural to me to try to figure out a way to turn this material into a game.” And the approach has worked, both as a teaching strategy and as a way to engage students with the subject matter. “Only after they’ve been immersed in the project do they realize they’ve been learning something. They’re learning through practical application, and that has tremendous value,” Brathwaite said. “Students ask to please stay and play one more round. If students are asking you to extend the length of the class, something’s going right.” Since she started incorporating the game into every class session, she’s also had perfect attendance. “Nobody ever [has] missed a class, which is pretty good for a required class,” she said. “They wanted to be there to find out what would happen to the characters. It’s awesomely fun.” She won’t actually be able to attend the final GDC panel in which she’s been asked to participate, “Accessibility Idol,” but SCAD interactive design and game development graduate student Chris Quinn will take her place. It’s a good opportunity for him, she said, because his thesis focuses on accessibility issues in games. The panel — which includes noted game designers Noah Falstein, who spoke at the 2006 Game Developers eXchange at SCAD, and Sheri Graner Ray — is charged with developing a game for quadriplegic users. “I think what they wanted were veteran designers who would be willing to take on a challenge like that,” Brathwaite said. Speaking of challenges, what about that long road trip? For Brathwaite, eight days in the car with her husband and their children — a 6-year-old and 2 1/2-year-old twins — is vastly preferable to flying. “When I go to speak at conferences, my family generally goes too,” she said. “They end up having this totally separate vacation that I get to see on video.” The trek to San Francisco for GDC already has become an annual tradition. “We make an educational experience out of the whole thing,” she said. “They love staying in hotels. We travel about nine hours a day, a lot of it when they’re sleeping. We’ve got it down to a science at this point.” She added, “My husband’s originally from the Caribbean, and for him, the thought of driving four days in one direction is just a hoot.” She’s looking forward to the trip and the conference, but she’s also looking forward to returning to SCAD at the end. “I love it,” she said. “I like the people I work with, and I love the students. It’s awesome.”  |
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