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Learning the Ropes of Game Design with Matt Deller

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk

You've got to hand it to Assistant Principal Matt Deller, a.k.a Poetic Colossus. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to teaching game design. Matt spent many years as a teacher, as a contributing Neverwinter Nights community member, and in a stint with no less than Obsidian Entertainment working on Neverwinter Nights 2. He has funneled all this experience into a program as unique as the people involved in its development and operation. We spoke with Matt about this program and how a high score in Asteroids can actually mean something in the real world.

So you're super famous in the Neverwinter Community - can you give us a wee tour of your involvement?

Ah, right. "Super famous."

Thanks for that lead-in, Jay. A thousand magic missiles to sting thy flea-ridden hide.

While I'd love to regale everyone with a fascinating retelling of my rise from obscurity to just relative obscurity, I'd like even more to see your readers remain awake for the ensuing questions.

The encapsulated version goes something as follows.

Always a daydreamer at heart, I left behind a 7-year teaching career to work for Obsidian Entertainment on the title Neverwinter Nights 2.

Getting to that point involved the inspiration of a friend who helped me learn the Aurora toolset (namely by me bastardizing his mod - sorry Matt!), a weekly "Writer's Club" of NWN players who endured my sadistic whims, and BioWare's own James Henley, a friend of mine who showed me and many others that breaking into the video game industry (and chasing a dream) wasn't impossible after all.

After working on the game in the design department for four months, I was offered the opportunity to serve as an Assistant Principal. Obsidian was extremely supportive of the situation I faced, but still, it was an excruciating decision to make. How do you give up company movie days, shorts and t-shirt as professional dress, marathon gaming sessions, an unlimited supply of free junk food, and having an office next to the guy who wrote "Planescape: Torment"!?

My contributions were infinitesimally small compared to the team's overall effort and the scope of the game, but it was an incredible experience and I was ridiculously privileged to have worked with such a talented group of individuals.

We have featured a few articles on how Neverwinter Nights has been used in educational settings. Did those stories inspire you to try something in your school?

The University of Minnesota's interactive journalism modules and the Education Arcade's history modules certainly qualify as examples of innovation regarding the Aurora toolset and education. The University of Alberta's game development course has also been an inspiration, but to my knowledge, no high school per se has used Neverwinter's Aurora toolset to drive a game design course, the course being a rarity in itself.

Southern California is a Mecca for the video game industry. Several of the industry's top studios all reside within a 40 mile radius of our school site. This includes Blizzard, Obsidian, Electronic Arts, Rock Star Games, Pandemic, and more. Premier schools like UCLA and USC are now offering classes in Game Design. It just seemed to be a natural progression for a local high school to offer such a course.

Plus, the movies Serenity, Orange County, The Impostor, The Cell, and others were filmed on our campus, so we're already cool like that.

Can you take us through what your project will be?

The class will be a year-long course that focuses on game design as a whole. Apart from creating design documents and studying the foundations of solid game design, students will get hands-on experience using the Aurora Toolset to design levels of their own. Scripting via C++, design aesthetics, meaningful dialogue, and interesting stories are all aspects we hope students will be able to incorporate into their own modules.

Worth mentioning is how fortunate we were to have an instructor already in place to teach the course - Dave Newton, our Computer Science and Business department chair, who teaches C++ programming and oversees our "Gamers Club" on campus.

I also proudly cite his all-time scoring record in Asteroids as further proof that he is the man for the job.

Our principal, Monica Principe, and the school district, Pomona Unified, have also been supportive from the start, which made it possible for Mr. Newton and me to get the ball rolling in creating the course.

What do you hope your students gain from this approach to learning?

Volumes upon volumes of research all lead to the same conclusion: using technology as a learning tool is the way to go. It's helpful that I have a Principal with vision and a school district that understands this, but honestly, how hard is it to sell a course that will (1) motivate students to read and write, (2) prompt them to excel in cooperative learning groups with other students, (3) assist them in learning fundamental technology skills, and (4) enlighten them in the value of setting goals and the importance of a finished product?

What do think is in store for new methods of education and the world of video games?

The reality of education is this - most students will not truly embrace learning until they can identify with it or they can make it their own in some unique fashion. Undoubtedly, some of our fondest memories of school stem from such experiences.

Enter video games.

Video games, unlike most other mediums of popular entertainment, allow the audience direct interaction - something not possible with movies, television, or literature.

Maybe blasting space aliens into quivering chunks is not your idea of education, but consider a game with a toolset that allows students to produce a work that satisfies their need for expression and allows them creative space.

Will our class, any other game design class, or video games in general produce the next generation of literary giants, mathematical geniuses, or prodigies in science?

I'm not sure.

But in this day and age, it's a pretty good start.

Related Links

• Students Tackle Game Development
• Back to School for NWN
• Profile: West Nottinghamshire College

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