[MUSIC] In this video I'll share a bit about myself and my background. My name's Brian Winn, and I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information, and the Director of the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University. I was born in 1971, one year before Pong was released to the arcade. At the early age of seven, I can remember going to the pizza parlor with my family and seeing Space Invaders for the first time. I was hooked. I would beg my dad for quarters to play. This continued over the next few years as a flurry of arcade games came on the scenes, from Asteroids to Pac-Man, to Donkey Kong. These early games really helped shape my view of game design. When I was nine years old, my family got an Atari 2600 game console. This was the first time I could play digital games at home. Of course, the games were not as good as the arcade equivalents, but rather than beg for quarters after every time I lost the game, I could play the game for hours on end and really start to think about what makes a good game, a good game. Two years later we got an Apple II computer. Rather than buying games for the computer, my dad decided to get me a book, something like How to Program Games in Basic. I began to learn to program. I first copied code directly from the book into the computer, just to see if I could get it to work, then I began to modify the code and change it to expand the games. Eventually I was able to write entirely new games of my own design. Of course they were very primitive by today's standards but it really launched my love into creating interactive experiences and games. Ultimately this led me to pursue computer science as an undergrad student at the University of Minnesota Duluth, this is really where I learned to program properly. During the summer of my junior year, I interned at IBM. While I cherished my time there and learned a lot, ultimately I decided I didn't want to work on traditional software projects. I really wanted to work on games. This led me to pursue to graduate school. I ended up going to Michigan State University for graduate school. With a focus on computer science, artificial intelligence, and human computer interaction. While this was the best decision that I ever made, unfortunately at this time there really were no courses in game design and development. After all, this was the early 1990s, and universities hadn't really caught up yet. The closest thing I could find was a course called hypermedia design. In this course we used a multimedia authoring tool called Director to craft interactive experiences. For the final project we were tasked to create an interactive auto-biography sort of with early version of the home page or LinkedIn profile. Rather than creating a straightforward menu with information I decided to create a game. I call it The Case of the Salami Slicer, where you learned a little bit about me through role playing as a investigative news reporter, trying to break the next big story. This course really solidified my desire to create games and interactive experiences. After graduation, I worked ten years building interactive media projects for the communication technology lab at Michigan State University. We developed dozens of educational CD ROMs and websites, many of which included games, or game like elements. In 2005, I helped establish the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University. The mission of the GEL lab is to design innovative prototypes, techniques, and complete games for entertainment and learning, and to advance the state of the art knowledge about games. I'm currently director of the lab. Across the last ten years at the lab, I programmed, designed and or reproduced over 20 game titles. You can learn a lot more about the Gel Lab at gel.msu.edu. My early experiences developing interactive media led me into teaching. In the fall of 2000 I thought the first ever game design and development course at Michigan State University. This course was soon made into a regular course. The one course quickly grew into two courses in game design development. And then in the summer of 2005 the Department of Media Information decided to go all in on game. We formulated an unique interdisciplinary program in game design and development. The program has grown to be one of the top rated programs in North America. In fact, the Corsair specialization is heavily inspired by the on-campus program. My primary goal as a teacher is to motivate my students and to create a structured learning environment that actively engages them in the subject matter. In that sense, I'm more of a guide, coach and mentor than the proverbial sage on the stage. Making games is hard. Making good games is even harder. In order for my students to succeed, they need to build their technical and creative skills. To do this, I try to create authentic, real world problems for them to work on. This means that my students need to create games. And they end up creating a lot of games as they move across my courses. I really stress iterative development. That is design, prototyping, play testing and refining. The more times you can go through this iterative loop, the more you'll learn and the better your games will be. Of course, making games is not typically a one person affair. Modern game development requires teams of individuals with complimentary skills working together in harmony. For this reason, I also really stress soft skills in my courses, such as communication, collaboration, negotiation, ideation, time management and leadership. For me and my students, trading games is a labor of love. My goal is to harness this passion polish it, refine it, and nurture it and push my students not only to advance themselves but also advance the art and science of making games. So what's next? Now that you know a little bit about me let's get to know your fellow students in the next activity. [MUSIC]
