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Gordon: 'Video Game Design Is The New MBA'
by Staff [PC, Console/PC]
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June 2, 2009
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As part of a larger interview rife with industry insights, former Electronic Arts CCO Bing Gordon spoke of video game design as "the new MBA" due to its value in many important sectors.
"I'm a believer in the game-ification of the world," he says. "I think video game design is the new MBA. Video game design is valuable in education, in internet portals, in advertising, in product design, in entertainment media design as well."
Gordon adds, "Video games are so compelling that people who grow up playing video games will have their habits and world views shaped forever."
He called out the education business as ripe for an interactive intervention: "I think education is in dire straits right now. The whole education business. Educators in public schools find that today's kids are more interested in the real-time self-paced interactive online, where everything is clickable, world of gaming, than they are in the boring ass world of text books and prescribed curriculum with memorization and multiple choice tests."
"I actually think that game-like systems with simulations are the new manipulatives for learning by doing," he continues. "I still think there are a lot of learning habits peer-to-peer, a lot learning habits solo, and self-learning habits of mentors. But great teachers are not very scalable, and I think new media is going to bail out the public education system."
The Kleiner Perkins partner argues that every Fortune 500 company should have someone who grew up playing Nintendo on its executive staff: "The NES first became popular in 1987. I think anyone that was born after 1971 got their driver's license when Nintendo was popular. Anybody younger than 38 grew up with a Nintendo or video game culture. I think that any company that's trying to sell to people under 38 needs to be video game smart."
"Then you look at cool web companies like Facebook or like LinkedIn, even like Etsy, they would all benefit from video game design thinking in their product design or a sense of how scoring and points and lifetime career personalization and customization and community and guilds and parties can increase engagement of consumers under the age 38," says Gordon.
"Every one of those companies could use a Will Wright or a Will Wright equivalent kind of on their executive team."
You can now read the full feature at Gamasutra, which goes into detail on Gordon's "contrarian" ideas on game development and the game industry (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
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