Plan beta

While some students are desperate to get out and start working, Jenna Hoffstein decided to leave her job in the video game industry, where she worked on projects such as “Dungeon & Dragons Online,” and come to IU for her master of science in telecommunications with an emphasis on game design.

WEEKEND: Why go back to college?

JENNA HOFFSTEIN: I’ve always been interested in working on computer games and initially entered the industry as a 3-D artist. My first introduction was a summer internship working as a production artist at Turbine, Inc., and after graduating college I worked as a 3-D artist for a start-up company that created virtual worlds. It was there that I realized I enjoyed design a lot more and made the switch into that discipline. I’m here at IU studying game design because I want to build up a better foundation of knowledge for myself so I can be a better designer.

So many people get into design through art or programming, so there seems to be little formal “design” training. I wanted to educate myself more about it.

W: What are some of the main topics you're learning about at IU?

JH: One of the best things about designing virtual worlds is that you can spend your entire life learning and not run out of relevant things to learn about – government, economics, biology – it’s all related somehow. I’m focusing on the psychological underpinnings of game design, game mechanics and how they relate to player experiences, and the actual process of game design and creation.

Right now in particular, I’m taking a class that focuses on evolutionary psychology, but so much of psychology relates. For example, if you want to create a good tutorial it’s important to understand how people learn, or if you have many types of avatars in your game it would be good to understand the psychology of identity and how people will relate to these avatars and other players through them.

Understanding motivations and the types of experiences players want are also extremely important.

W: Do you see the game-modifying community as a boost or a threat to the industry? Are these communities ever going to endanger the need for professionals?

JH: I think user-generated content is an amazing feature that has spread out from games to media of all forms. While it has the potential to change the landscape a bit for designers, there will always be a need for design professionals. Someone still has to design the tools that allow others to create user-generated content. While it may continue to be a huge part of some games, like “LittleBigPlanet,” there will always be a need for professionally created content. I think you could compare it to reality TV – while it’s been a huge success, people still want scripted shows around.

But I think (game modifying) is a great way for amateurs to get their feet wet and potentially get noticed.