The question of communication in screenwork heavy jobs
For those trying to enter into the world of creating video games, it seems that they are also entering into a world dominated by screenwork. All the most important aspects of the job require screenwork, whether it be programming, design, or animation, and as my media experiment showed, even communication between departments can be done purely with screens.
Our lives are already consumed by screens, I personally cannot remember the last time I was with friends or family and no one interacted with a screen. Work (whether it be in a school or professional environment) always seemed like the best place to escape from a world dominated by screens. Sure, there is a degree of work done on computers, but many aspects of these working environments require you to detach from screens to focus on non-screenwork. Which is why I find myself interested in the world of video game design students, and how their screenwork dominated world is done.
The amount of screenwork done on their end is similar to the amount done by the online German news outlets studied in Dominic Boyer’s The Life Informatic, which upon reading made me consider questions effecting them and how it may relate to video game design students. One I found particularly interesting and when comparing the two is the news department at the radio station in Boyer’s book.
The news department’s primary job is to constantly monitor the incoming news reports, which of course is done via screenwork. It is also mentioned that due to the importance of their screenwork, they do not get to leave their desks for long, not even for meetings which can be as short as 10 minutes. This is similar to how in my video experiment, I touched upon how even personal meetings are kept to a minimum as video game designers simply add communication to their growing amount of screenwork, and just speak to one another through textual messages through platforms such as facebook.
However, the nonstop screenwork conducted in the news outlet is at the very least amplified by a constant discourse among one another about what they are working on, something not present for the young video game designers through their screen to screen communication.
Whereas the new department is constantly being challenged, checked, and invigorated by their discourse, there seems to be no sign of this so far with the design students. Even if it is present with their textual communication, it would be easy for them to ignore one another since there is no actual physical presence in their case.
This has created several questions that I will pursue during my research: is this form of communication more efficient for them? Why did they choose to do it this way? What problems and benefits arise as a result? Does one outweigh the other? How does it compare to past group project experiences for the students? And, if this is happening at the student level, what is it like in a professional work environment?
Communication in a professional video game design environment is an area I plan on looking more into as I would like to compare how the students do their work to how the professionals do it, especially since professionals seem to like the way things are done. According to Sokanu, a psychological inventory for career counseling, video game designers are quite happy with their work environment and feel they fit in fine in this career field, with each earning an average survey score of 4.2 and 4.3, respectively.
