Teaching: Thoughts on My First Semester
Part of me has always wanted to be a teacher. I am not sure exactly where this desire comes from, though. Perhaps it is wanting to impart knowledge to other people. Perhaps to help create an understanding of how I view things in the world. Perhaps it is just hoping to spread some of the enthusiasm that I have around to people who would be interested in hearing about it and help them learn the skills I have obtained over the years. Or maybe I just inherited some of it from my mother who was a teacher for many years.
I have joked that I would retire from making video games when I made millions and then become a teacher. One always hopes that they will do really well in their profession, and there are definitely people who are making lots of money in this one, but realistically I will likely just slowly build up enough of a nest egg to retire comfortably in forty years or so. So that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for teaching in my twilight years, unfortunately. However, by a stroke of luck I suppose, I was contacted by Tribeca Flashpoint Academy on LinkedIn about a potential teaching opportunity. So I decided that I should take this chance and pursue it and a few weeks later I was signed up and slated to teach Intro to Game Programming. (Side note: I am actually working for a former boss, so let that be a lesson to not burn bridges folks!)
I view teaching as an extremely vital and noble profession, and unfortunately it is one that I feel is not supported enough in our country. I believe that one should try to give back to the greater community at some point in their lives, and this is an area I feel I have been neglecting as of late. I have been very busy with my family and work plus I am not exactly a “people person.” I give to charities, but beyond that I don’t give much of my time to helping out. So I feel that by teaching I am giving myself a little bit in that way. Plus it just happens to be in an area that I am good at and enjoy!
This will be no surprise to any teachers reading this, but teaching is hard. Especially since this was my first time doing it. I was teaching to a class of mixed abilities, so not only to students who would want to become programmers, but students who would want to pursue art, design, or production as well. So I needed to find a way to teach programming to those who have never encountered it before while still keeping engaged those that have several years of it under their belts. The way that I ended up doing this was by peppering in slides that I had as their first bulletpoint be “Advanced Topic,” and would often explain that this was supplementary knowledge that wouldn’t be tested on but was tangentially related to what we were covering. A few of the more “programmatically”-experienced students said this helped keep things a bit more interesting and relevant, though I worry that it took away time that I could have used to explain in more detail the topics that were going to be evaluated. Something that I will likely take a second look at if I end up teaching this course again in order to find a balance I am more comfortable with. I also invited the students to hit me up for ideas that I could use to help supplement the teaching by assigning readings or projects to be doing outside the class curriculum, but while there was some interest initially I ended up not having to do much of that. Likely they were soon swamped with work from other classes 🙂
Another idea that I had for catering to a large gap in skill-sets is to focus more on projects instead of simple homework. We had one big project at the end and the students had the option of just simply following the directions and doing the minimum criteria or they could work in extra stuff. A few students also decided to write the project from scratch (some base code and an example was provided). This led to a few rather impressive projects (though looking at the code showed there was still much to teach, but I gave examples and suggestions to improve that aspect) and really kept the students engaged. I think focusing more on projects will allow the students to scale them to meet their wants as well as get in valuable programming that leads to more critical thinking on their part.
Most of my lectures were fairly one-sided, with me presenting the slides and talking through them (but allowing the students to ask questions at any time). There were a few times that I tried to work in some quick group activities, but generally ran out of time to do these. I recall one time that we did do one, and overall I think it worked fairly well. The class was divided into four groups (based on classroom layout), and each group produced good results, but they were definitely dominated by the more ambitious students (and I had to ask a student to stop playing games on their laptop twice while this was going on). So while I think it was good to break up the usual routine, I will need to give more thought on how to better engage all the students and get them to participate (smaller groups maybe?).
Another thing that I started to do more often was to actually do examples in the IDE (Integrated Development Environment, where you can write and build all the code). This was something brought up to me by a few students, but since the IDE wasn’t installed on the computers in our class (long story, but it took me a little while to make it happen) it kept me from being able to do so and I think that made the class more difficult for students. In the future I will definitely take more time to show use of the tools and explain more stuff about ways to use them and their importance. I did this more near the end, but I think it would be beneficial to start off doing this and also to incorporate all the assignments and quizzes into using the IDE primarily (this was also done more as the class progressed).
I eventually worked in some examples using video games and then posed a problem that we could solve using the techniques we covered in class and then worked through them (time permitting). I would also call on students to give me ideas of how we could approach the problems while working through them. I think these worked fairly well, though by covering lots of material in class (including optional stuff, though I wouldn’t spend much time on those) oftentimes I would not have sufficient time to work through these at a comfortable pace, so a lot of times I felt rushed. Hopefully with more experience (and maybe less quizzes) I will better be able to judge how long it will take for me to cover certain material and leave adequate time at the end.
All in all, I would say that I really enjoyed teaching. While I was really nervous at first, I eventually got much more comfortable and started to get a hang of things. The work was a bit more than I expected, but I was able to make it work and found it enjoyable. I definitely got the notion in my head that the harder I worked the better off my students would do, which is a nice motivation (as long as you don’t go overboard). As I am sure is obvious, I have a lot of ideas of things to improve upon (and many more that I didn’t touch on in this post) and new stuff to try. I would definitely say that I would love for an opportunity to teach again and am glad that I made the decision to teach in the first place.
Quick Impressions of Dead Space 3
I just recently wrote my review of completing Dead Space 2 and it was around the time that Dead Space 3 was being shown off at E3. One of the big new features that they were touting was co-op. I explained in my Dead Space 2 review my thoughts about the relationship between power and horror. While many horror movies do employ a group and it works well in that context by having the character’s fears play off each other, I don’t think the same effect extends to games. While games can be a very social environment and playing together is something I think games should allow more of, I think that with horror it runs into some major roadblocks. Typically in games in order to keep people engaged when playing together there is a simple revive mechanic when one player goes down the other player can walk over and get them back on their feet. I don’t know if this is the case for the newest installment, but I would imagine there would be something similar. In horror movies, it is scary because once a character dies, they generally remain dead, and so the overall group has lost power. In a video game setting, it would just be a temporary setback (though I suppose that thinking could also be extended to the notion of reloading a save game). Not to mention that I find when playing with someone else it gets a lot harder to be truly immersed in the game, which makes it hard to convince yourself that what you are seeing is something to be afraid of.
In addition, Dead Space 3 also appears to also take place on a planet with some wide open areas and feature more in the way of gun play which is more typical of a mainstream action game. I think this focus on action over horror will diminish the potential fear and terror that the game. While I will wait and see and read several reviews before making up my mind as to whether to play this game, the impression that they are giving about the direction of the franchise is not giving me much confidence.
Game Review: Dead Space 2
Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.
Platform Shift
I played the first Dead Space on 360 awhile ago, and enjoyed it, but not so much that I felt that I needed to play the sequel once it came out. During a rush of Steam sales (a newfound weakness of mine) the sequel was discounted to just $5, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I have to say, it was well worth the money. I was a little worried at first about it being a console game first and playing that on the PC. Typically, games ported over will feel like they were rushed and their control schemes won’t feel suited to a mouse and keyboard setup, but it seems like a good amount of care was put into this version as there were no serious issues and I didn’t feel hampered or wanting a gamepad instead. There were a few default key bindings that felt a little awkward at times, but it didn’t bother my enough to change them. It seems like PC is starting to become a well treated platform again, as the consoles are definitely showing their age so more people are opting to play on PC again so they can start seeing additional effects that some developers are using with PC DX11 versions of their games. I also find that I am starting to prefer playing PC games due to the fact that it is away from the kids’ room near the TV (and I don’t have to compete for screen time as much if they are up).
The Setup
The basic gameplay twist that Dead Space has is that instead of the usual “shoot them in the head” strategy that most games employ, in this one the point is to shoot off the limbs of the enemies (shooting them in the head generally just makes them mad). It is an interesting approach and I am glad to see games experiment with new approaches. It helps that the enemies are hideously disfigured humans with splayed limbs to make your job a bit easier. They were transformed this way by an alien virus that graphically configures human flesh into bizarre, twisted abominations that you get the joys of fighting through.
The plot also deals with religion, “markers”/artifacts, and government plots a little to give the plot some weight and context, though it isn’t entirely crucial to understand all of it. A lot of this is revealed through text and audio logs found throughout the environment. While I can appreciate that littering these throughout the environment helps put them in a context within the world and makes them optional for people that want to skip them, it does make everything hard to follow and a little hard to piece everything together as to what exactly is going on outside of what your next objective is. But perhaps that is a weaker point of doing the story that way instead of a linear, cutscene-based approach (which has its own weaknesses).
The Horror
The Dead Space series is supposed to be all about horror, and I think they accomplish this to a pretty good degree. I would definitely describe the game with words like suspenseful, intense, and scary. Granted, as an adult who knows that all this is just polygons, textures, and lighting effects at its core, I wasn’t exactly kept up at night with nightmares. But I did have to take a break after an hour or so to calm down my nerves. Granted, as the game went on I suppose I got a bit more used to it as I was able to play for longer stretches without it bothering me. Perhaps I slowly got desensitized to it. Or I just acquired enough of an arsenal that I wasn’t too worried about what lurked around the corners.
That brings me to a point that I want to make when it comes to the idea of horror and how some games try to be scary but then undermine the atmosphere and enemy design with their gameplay balance. The true enemy of horror is having too much power. This power can come in a variety of forms, such as too much information about the enemy or too powerful of weapons, but regardless of the source it will lessen the terror that the player could feel. In order for this to work, the player needs to have a feeling of helplessness and fear of the unknown. Some of the most anxiety-inducing moments in games comes when you only have three bullets left, no health, and there is a big monster between you and the next safe room. If you could just waltz in and blow everything away, then you don’t have much reason to be afraid. If you know that enemy X will spawn at location Y every time then you don’t have much reason to be afraid (of course, if it takes almost everything in your inventory to get past it that could be pretty scary).
I am reminded of a time when I was playing the Resident Evil remake on GameCube when the game surprised me in a very scary way. In old Resident Evil games, you have a variety of rooms that you go through. An unstated rule of the game is that enemies don’t go between these rooms. However, one time when exploring around near the end of the game there was a common but strong enemy (a hunter for those familiar) in a room that I decided to just avoid for some reason or another. I went into the adjoining room and looked around for a moment until the enemy that I skipped broke through the door I had just used. I remember being rather afraid at this moment since the game broke what I perceived to be an unbreakable rule. While I was able to dispatch the enemy, the moment still stays with me.
That actually reminds me of another good horror technique that the Resident Evil remake introduced (sorry to drone on about it, but they made that game rather scary). The regular zombies, once killed, stayed dead on the floor (no disappearing when you left the room), but then after an undetermined (by me anyway) amount of time, then could come back as a stronger, faster zombie. You had a way to counter this by burning the downed zombies with oil and fire, but then you had to have additional stuff in your inventory (and a limited amount to boot). I remember that there was even a zombie that was left outside a safe room that started dead, so you had to decide to if you wanted to use some of your limited resources on it. I believe that I decided to leave it on one playthrough to see if it would ever get up (it didn’t), but that didn’t stop me from cautiously stepping around it whenever I wanted to go past it.
Which brings me back to Dead Space 2, and something I am glad they added in. Near the end of the game, you are introduced to an immortal enemy (at least I could never figure out a way to kill it). This actually helped offset the complacency that I was starting to feel with the game as I was to the point where I had a pretty strong offensive so I could blast through most of the enemies without too much of an issue. They first introduce you to the enemy by itself, so naturally I sent a long time blasting it with everything I had before I realized that it just wasn’t going to die (you could incapacitate it for brief moments while it regrew all the limbs you blasted off). This was then followed by a quick attempt at an exit (which was foiled by me be too slow and prompted a quick load to get my health and ammo back). The enemy is then introduced again and again as it chases you to the end of the game, along with scads of other strong enemies that you have to deal with. I didn’t even bother killing most of the normal fodder once the black invincible one showed up, and attempted to quickly exit any area that I was currently in. This turned the endgame into a scramble towards the finish, blasting anything that got in my way and rarely affording me a chance to catch my breath. So now even though I was brimming to the teeth with strong weapons, I was still unable to get comfortable since there were always too many enemies to deal with and then it would show up and I’d have no choice but to get moving if I wasn’t already. So that introduced some of that horror back into the game at the point where you felt that you were finally safe.
The Signoff
Ending felt a little forced, not entirely sure what was going on, I’m not a horror-buff but had a good time, would recommend
Dead Space 2 ended fairly well as far as horror games do. The rush to the end was met with a fairly unimpressive boss fight that led to a Isaac (your main character) pretty much sitting down and accepting his fate to die while the credits scroll by. “Just kidding!” says the game as it bursts into the solemn moment with the other main character busting in and you are off on a quick, escape from the self-destructing facility end sequence before you manage to get away safely. It was a little jarring at first, but the fact that it ends up with Isaac actually saving the girl (and in turn her saving him at the end there) actually ended the game fairly well. Naturally, with all things horror, you find out that the facility and marker that were destroyed were only one of many, meaning that your job is far from done. Good for sequels as well, of course.
I admit that I am not a huge horror buff, but I appreciate the interesting dynamics that they tend to employ from the usual “just blast everything in sight” that accompanies most action-based games. Overall, I enjoyed Dead Space 2 a lot and would recommend it to other people. I don’t believe it sold too well, but there was enough of an interest for a sequel (I have a few impressions about it that I will talk briefly about in a later post) and several other media spinoffs. So here is to seeing if they can keep the horror genre fresh in the coming years.