From Syllabus to Studio: Industry Voices for the Next Generation of Game Professionals
We are pleased to share this call for chapter proposals for From Syllabus to Studio: Industry Voices for the Next Generation of Game Professionals, to be published open access by Play Story Press. Proposals are due May 4. Authors will be notified by May 11. Full chapters will be due June 15. Full details are below. Please feel free to contact us with questions or to submit your proposal at rferdig@gmail.com.
Best, Rick Ferdig, Enrico Gandolfi & Emily Baumgartner
How This Book Came to Be
In 2021, we published Teaching the Game, a two-volume open-access collection of course syllabi from university instructors around the world who teach gaming (download for free: Volume 1 and Volume 2). The goal was simple: gaming is taught across dozens of disciplines and institutions, but faculty rarely get to see how their peers approach it. By gathering detailed, richly annotated syllabi in one place, we hoped to give instructors a resource they could actually learn from, adapt, and build on.
Many of you saw that we recently produced a call for chapters for a second edition of that book. In the process, something interesting happened. We began receiving proposals from game industry professionals (i.e., designers, producers, audio specialists, economists, engineers, and others) who wanted to contribute. Their enthusiasm was genuine and the content they proposed was exactly the kind of insight students need. However, most were not current instructors and did not have course numbers or syllabi. In short, the format of Teaching the Game, built around course materials and pedagogical reflection, simply wasn’t the right container for what they had to offer.
That gap is what created this book. From Syllabus to Studio is a companion to Teaching the Game, designed for a different kind of contributor and a different kind of reader. Where the syllabi collection helps instructors develop and refine their courses by learning from peers, this book gives those same instructors something to put in students’ hands: direct, first-person accounts from working professionals across every corner of the games industry.
Purpose
This book is written directly to students. Each chapter is authored by a working game industry professional who has chosen one specific area of expertise and written honestly about it: what students need to understand, what skills they will need, and where things are headed. The result is a collection that instructors can assign as supplementary reading or use as a course text, and that students can return to throughout their education and early careers.
Every chapter follows the same four-section structure:
- Who the author is and how they got there
- What students need to understand about their area of the industry
- The soft and technical skills students will need
- Where things are going
Within that structure, chapters vary considerably. Some will be theoretical; some will be intensely practical, some will be a mix. Some will focus on the creative side of games; others on the business, the technology, or the infrastructure. What they share is a specific focal point and a direct address to the student reader.
This is not a book of general advice. We are not looking for graduation speeches or sweeping overviews of the industry. We are looking for professionals who have something specific to say: a particular insight, tension, framework, or reality from their corner of games that students genuinely need to understand before they walk through a studio door.
Who We Are Looking For
We welcome proposals from working professionals across every area of the games industry, including but not limited to:
- Game design and development
- Narrative design and writing
- Audio and music
- Art, animation, and visual design
- Production, project management, and agile methodology
- Game economy and monetization design
- Mobile and browser-based game development
- XR (virtual reality, augmented reality, hybrid reality) and gaming
- Quality assurance and player experience
- Esports operations and management
- Marketing, community, and business development
- Artificial intelligence in games, game development, and work routines
- Accessibility and inclusive design
- Independent and indie development
- Content creation and game industry
- Ethics in the video game industry
- Hybrid gaming (video games & board games, video games & role-playing games, etc.)
- Any other area in which you have genuine expertise and something specific to say to students
You do not need an academic affiliation to contribute. You do not need a syllabus. You need expertise in a specific area, a commitment to writing directly to the student reader, and something focused and honest to say. If your proposal tries to cover the entire industry, we will ask you to narrow it. The best chapters in this collection will be the ones that go deep on one thing rather than wide on everything.
Details
To be considered, please submit a proposal of 150–250 words by May 4 that includes:
- Your name, current job title, and company or organization
- A proposed chapter title
- A description of your specific focal point; this is not what your job covers generally, but the one thing you want students to understand from reading your chapter
- A sentence or two on why this matters to students entering your area of the industry right now
Authors will be notified by May 11. Accepted authors will receive a complete chapter template. Full chapters are due June 15. The book will be published open access with Creative Commons licensing by Play Story Press.
Please send proposals and any questions to rferdig@gmail.com.