From Schoolroom to Workroom

Serving as an intern for Dr. Jamie McDaniel, director of the Technical/Professional Writing program at Pittsburg State University, offers a variety of opportunities for students. One of the more unique opportunities students may encounter is an internship as a game designer. In my internship, another student and I worked alongside Dr. McDaniel to create a tabletop game that would help students learn about what technical/professional writers do and the variety of careers that are available to people with degrees in technical/professional writing. While our game is not as sophisticated as a professional game, there are still a huge variety of skills required for this sort of project. Students need to be a creative writer, an editor, a usability specialist, a graphic artist, a project manager, and a documentation specialist all in one.

A required qualification for this type of internship is definitely an interest for tabletop games. Interns need to be able to design a game that not only they would want to play, but that other gamers would want to play as well. As Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg say in “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing,” “…the writer must first become a "reader" of a content before he or she can be "literate" within it. This literacy… includes highly situational knowledge that can be gained only from participating in the context” (p 225). The best way to achieve familiarity with the gaming genre is simply to play games. The interns will write the backstory and narrative of the game, in addition to the cards and the rulebook. These elements need to be clear and direct, but should also be entertaining and fun. This means that interns need to be adept at both creative and technical writing. Additionally, because they are in charge of the written content, they need to have advanced editing skills. Interns will design the artwork for the game, so they also need to be familiar with design programs like Adobe Illustrator. Interns will also design the layout for the cards, rule book, and other documents, so another Adobe program they may need to be familiar with is InDesign. Knowledge of good design principles is also necessary for this reason. Interns should also be able to work in a team; most games cannot be created by just one person. Because of this, interns need to be flexible. Each person in the group will have a unique vision, so it is the responsibility of the interns to create group cohesion. Lastly, game design interns should be skilled at organization and time management. There are many elements to designing a game and interns will have to maintain a regular schedule in order to complete these elements in a timely manner.

I have personally used all of the skills listed above during my internship, except for familiarity with Adobe Illustrator. Because I am in a joint internship, this responsibility was covered by my partner. My writing skills have also had to adapt while creating games. This relates to the writing context of my internship as well. In her article “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations,” Linda Driskill writes, “An awareness of the effects of specific situations, company procedures, and factors inside and outside the company has come to be known as the "business savvy" that only the experienced can apply in a writing situation” (p. 57). This passage is relevant because a writer can only become aware of specific situations and factors in the gaming writing context by being familiar with games. While I would ordinarily write in a fairly academic style, games require more simple language so they can appeal to multiple audiences. This writing differs from writing in an academic setting because we are generally encouraged to write in longer sentences and to use more advanced vocabulary. Because of this, the gaming genre allows more creative freedom in some way because the writers can use informal language and words that they may not use in an essay, but they are also limited in other ways because they have to use vocabulary that is consistent within the gaming community.

My work atmosphere is incredibly relaxed. Because I am in an internship with my professor and my boyfriend, the pressure is lessened greatly. Interestingly, this has not affected my performance in the internship. This is mostly likely because there is still a clear organizational hierarchy. Dr. McDaniel is ultimately in charge of the final product because he is the professor and it is his game, but he is also always willing to listen to our ideas or suggestions, so it doesn’t feel as though we are beneath him in any way. Susan Katz discusses authority in her work “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise,” where she writes, “…I will use Kanter's definition of power, "the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done" (1983, p. 213). Authority can be taken to mean a source of power, and influence refers to a specific use of power” (p. 421). When this definition is taken into consideration, I would say that everyone had roughly the same amount of power and thus the same amount of authority. The game feels like a product of all of us despite being spearheaded by Dr. McDaniel, so I would say that the organizational hierarchy is relatively even in this respect.

Taking all of this information into consideration, I would definitely recommend that students experience this sort of internship. This experience allows students to apply and refine many different skills that are relevant in the technical writing field but are not exercised in the classroom or in other internships. Because of this, it is an incredibly unique and multi-faceted internship. Even if students lack a few of the “required qualifications,” those can be negotiable if other members in the group can balance these areas. Furthermore, this internship also grants students an opportunity to gain new skills that they may not have encountered in their regular classes.

Sources:

Linda Driskill, “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”

Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Susan Katz, “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”