| By Carol A. Mellow
Students in Professor Bick Treut’s “Introduction to Mass Communication” class may not have a crystal ball, but they did try to get a glimpse of the future.
On Nov. 15 and 17, the 20 women and nine men in the class gathered in a large classroom on the third floor in Somerset Hall for the first “Summit on the Future.” Desks were moved in a large “U” shape as students took their seats with name placards in front of them.
The Summit on the Future is basically a structured brainstorming session on a specific topic—in this case, video games and the digital gaming industry. Treut moderated the summit, but the students did most of the talking.
In a search for ways to excite and involve his students in the learning process, Treut came up with the summit from his vast experience conducting scenario-planning sessions for Fortune 1000 companies. “I just threw all the pieces together — the briefing book and the outline for discussion,” said Treut.
Scenario-planning is a strategic-planning method used by organizations to make flexible long-term plans. Treut chose the Pentagon Scenario Method, one of many quantitative-analysis methods. It’s the easiest to present in the classroom setting because it contains fewer steps and takes less time to complete, he said.
He had three objectives in mind when choosing this method: to cover the content in an efficient manner; to get the students to think creatively and not just mirror the things that read; and to come up with something the students had ownership in. The key questions to answer were, “What will the future game industry look like? How will it affect traditional media and our way of life (work, social and school)?”
The scope of the analysis would cover a five- to 10-year look into a probable future. The categories in this summit included industry, economic, social, technological, political and consumer.
The summit required students to analyze current trends across these categories, considering what trends are out there today and what impact these trends will have in the future. They then mapped the driving trends for each category, determining what the outcome will be and identifying extreme and possible outcomes for each.
Twenty-six different trends were identified, including personal gaming devices (portability), in-game advertising, growth of digital gaming as a sanctioned “sport,” and employment in game development/design. Each participant ranked and scored the 26 trends, with 4 being important and likely and 1 being not important and not likely.
The participants turned in their personal trend rankings to be compiled by Treut. In turn, the compilation will be brainstormed for possible outcomes to see if a scenario of the future of the gaming industry can be constructed.
Treut was very positive about the summit and told the participants that the scenario they come up with will be accessed by the people in the industry. These people “are always really hungry and thirsty for trend-line information, particularly from people in your age group because you have a whole different perspective as to where things are going,” said Treut.
He also said this type of quantitative analysis is a nice thing for students’ portfolios when they go looking for jobs.
Justin Shapp, a Web development major who participated in the event, said, “This was a great place to be able to have an open discussion of what the future is going to be. We usually get an adult perspective; it’s nice to get my generation’s perspective.”
Alex Clauss, a liberal arts major who participated in the event, said “it was nice to discuss gaming in a classroom setting and that gaming is essentially going mainstream.”
Treut said that by hosting this summit, he is “letting the students help change the curriculum (in the Mass Communication class) —basically how I’m going to cover it and what I’m going to cover. I’ll probably do the same exercise again (next semester) because it will be really interesting to see how the scenarios change.”
To read the resulting scenario and key trends from the "Summit on the Future" follow this link:
Summit on the Future Document 2006
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