About this time last year, Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler were at the forefront of a newly charged-up effort to cement a burgeoning game development scene in Madison. As of this January, they’ll be taking their efforts to California instead.
Squire and Steinkuehler, married UW-Madison professors who co-direct the UW-Madison Games + Learning + Society Center, are leaving the UW at the end of the year, having accepted positions at the University of California-Irvine. While part of their decision was driven by the academic and professional opportunities Irvine offers, another part was driven by something else.
“The climate of the state of Wisconsin helped contribute to the feeling that it was time to leave,” says Steinkuehler. “State government and state universities don’t always align, but the way the conversations have gone lately — so disrespectful, so cantankerous — statesmanship has gone out the window.”
Squire agrees: “When there is this kind of open hostility and uncertainty in what the future will hold, it’s hard to innovate in an environment like that.”
Their departure almost certainly assures that a formalized game development program at UW-Madison, something Squire and Steinkuehler have been working toward for the past decade, will be delayed if not scrapped altogether. The possibility of earning a basic game developer certificate at the UW, however, still exists.
In Steinkuehler, UW is losing someone who spent two years serving as videogames czar for President Barack Obama and is the current president of the Higher Education Videogames Association. This week, she’s representing the association in Philadelphia, speaking at a Democratic National Convention event on the importance of the videogame industry and the role of games in civic engagement.
Squire and Steinkuehler’s GLS program was responsible for bringing in more than $10 million in grants from the federal government and private foundations, and another $1 million in private industry contracts. Additionally, the center’s staff has dozens of people employed in private-sector projects involving gaming.
It’s not difficult to understand what lured them away. Unlike UW, UC-Irvine has a game development degree program already in place, as well as an informatics and e-sports program. (It even offers scholarships to e-sports athletes.)
While Madison has a thriving professional games development scene, Irvine is home to Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft, and it’s also in the heart of the coastal tech industry.
Even so, the choice to bail wasn’t painless or easy. Steinkuehler’s a UW alum, and the couple have enjoyed raising their two sons in Madison.
“We realized we can put our backs into building through the university, but without the support of policymakers, we’re hamstrung,” says Steinkuehler. “That’s different in places like California and New York. I would rather not spend my time on administrative problems that make my life difficult.”
While the couple’s departure is a blow to UW, the good news is that the city’s game scene continues to thrive in other important ways. Established players like Filament Games, Perblue, Raven Software and Human Head continue to grow, attract new employees and pile up new projects.
Michael Gay, senior vice president of economic development for Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP), one of the other key players in the efforts to bolster Madison’s game development scene, remains hopeful that that MadREP’s partnership with the Madison Games Alliance, a group that includes established and independent local game developers, will keep the momentum for a vibrant scene alive.
“Losing a key asset at the UW is important,” says Gay, who notes that he was hoping Madison’s scene would grow to attract West Coast talent, not the other way around. “It’s hard to replace people like Kurt and Constance, but this is still a very dynamic environment for game development.”
Gay points to several federal grants MadREP has recently landed to spur tech and game-development efforts, as well as the Kickstarter campaign by local developer Sky Ship to create a PC version of the popular card game Gloom.
In a few weeks, Squire and Steinkuehler will preside over what’s likely to be the final GLS Conference, which was, ironically, set to be the opening act in an annual partnership with Forward Fest. Now it’ll serve as the opener of a farewell tour for the couple who created it.
“I do worry it’s a setback for UW-Madison,” says Steinkuehler. ”But hopefully not for the game development scene.”
