In the wake of E3 and its high-profile unveilings of the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3, arguments have raged over whose console stole whose feature, and which system maker is really the most innovative. Wouldn't it be nice to know for sure?

Perhaps there's a way to find out.

The BBC is reporting that Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University has created a website designed to answer just such questions.

The Game Innovation Database (GIDb) will be a Wikipedia-style resource for games, hardware/services, and innovations. Currently the site has accumulated over 400 entries, including "First use of in-game research" (Armada 2525, 1991) and "First Game with Cooperative Play" (Fire Truck, 1978).

Professor Jesse Schell of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, a member of the team behind the idea for GIDb, explained it's importance:

"We have created the Game Innovation Database in order to create a historical record of which innovations appeared when, and why they are important... So many videogame innovations have occurred so fast that there is a danger that many fascinating and important innovations will be forgotten."
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Would you like to create video games but find yourself daunted by the fact that displaying a simple message in Windows can take hundreds of lines of code? Perhaps Alice can help.

Who?

Alice is a program developed by the Stage 3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy. The innovative program offers novice coders a 3D graphics development environment that allows them to concentrate on learning and experimenting with programming concepts instead of suffering through proper syntax and complicated code structure. Details can be gleaned from this 12 minute demo. However the basic appeal for students is that instead of typing this:

if(((GetAsyncKeyState(VK_UP) & 0x8000) ? 0: 1) && (ball_ptr->radius<MAX_RADIUS))ball_ptr->radius ;

Alice users create much more intuitive statements such as:

If [the user presses the up arrow key] and [the ball's radius is less than the
maximum] then [increase the radius of the ball by 1].

Much easier to read, isn't it? The program, free to anyone who wants it, has thus far used rudimentary and, to be blunt, unattractive 3D models created in 3D Studio Max. A recent collaboration with Electronic Arts will guarantee that Alice has the looks to go with her personality because version 3 will be incorporating art assets from the Sims (read the press release here).

"Getting the chance to use the characters and animations from The Sims is like teaching at an art school and having Disney give you Mickey Mouse," said comp sci prof Randy Pausch, director of the Alice Project. "The Sims is EA's crown jewel, and the fact that they are willing to use it for education shows a kind of long-term vision one rarely sees from large corporations."
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Yesterday's GamePolitics coverage of a Depauw University prof's vicious slamming of video game design degrees generated a slew of comments and even managed to get Slashdotted.

This morning we find the opposing view in a reprint of a Los Angeles Times article which surveys university programs in video game design. The piece ranks Georgia Tech, the University of Central Florida, Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Southern California among the best such programs.

"Our program thrives on students having multiple passionate backgrounds and they inevitably come up with wacky stuff," said USC's Scott Fisher, chair of the interactive media division. The program's first class of six students graduated in the spring.

"Our curriculum is built around getting people to learn more about how to work together," said Randy Pausch, co-director of Carnegia-Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The school has contracts with EA and Activision to hire grads of the program.

Henry Jenkins (left) of MIT was also interviewed for the article.

"If you look at the games sector," Jenkins said, "what you see historically is they've hired two groups of people: programmers and graphic artists. But games are becoming a storytelling and entertainment medium. Neither of those groups have the vocabulary to talk to each other very well because they come from much different worlds. We're training technologists to think like entertainers. In the same way film schools changed Hollywood, game studies will change the games industry."