“Every student should have their own learning environment with which they are interacting, and it adapts to an individual student’s pace,” Marko Suvajdzic stated. He continued talking about gamifying education during his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014.
Marko Suvajdzic has maintained his passion for games through more than 17 years in the games industry and over a decade in academia. Now the associate professor of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the director of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida, and CEO and co-founder of Organic to Digital (O2D), he remains optimistic, “I can call myself entrepreneurial, or disruptive, or visionary, or strategic . . . but all those things come from my sense of optimism. I look at the world around me and automatically think of ways to make it better, improve it.” It may be through making a new video game, changing members on a production team, volunteering, or coming up with a better way to do something, but all these flow from his optimism. He exclaims, “Let’s love life!”
Although Suvajdzic has received many awards for his work and has many moments in his career that he cherishes, he constantly looks forward to the next project. It is this attitude toward creating something new and constantly innovating that drives him from day to day. He insists, “I cherish the challenge and love to create something new.”
Paving His Own Way
Nine years ago, Suvajdzic started his own game studio, something he had long believed he would do. He used his personal credit card for this boot-strapping operation, and for the first few years, they focused on building the team and working on internal processes all while doing a lot of outsourcing work. Because he has had opportunities to work with some amazing minds, he feels an obligation toward them in the way he runs his company. He considers what Andrew Keen, Rob Folup, or Lon Clark would ask about what he is doing and what choices they would make. While he believes in the decisions he makes, he pays gratitude toward those who have helped him grow and learn.
With a drive for learning as well as gaming, Suvajdzic began teaching in 2004. He had lived in San Francisco through the 1990s and realized the city was far ahead of the other US cities in digital art and design. The USA was ahead of most of the world in digital production as well, he discovered. When he returned to Belgrade in 2002, he decided sharing his knowledge was absolutely imperative. In 2005, he founded the first college department for Computer Art and Design in the country. In 2013, he began collaborating with the University of Florida, promoting video games and entrepreneurship in their programs. “It is all very exciting!” he says.
Teaching Through Gaming
Suvajdzic is attracted to free-to-play games because of the ease with which new games can be experienced, with no upfront commitment. On the other hand, he detests having his children ask him to pay for upgrades or in-game purchases, when the game is one he knows will lose its appeal in a day or two. So he uses them as a teaching experience to explain about “a hook” and how games are made to motivate a player to buy things at certain points in the gameplay. But yes, he still does buy upgrades for them.
The most important development coming in the games industry, according to Suvajdzic, is using games for purposes other than recreation, primarily education. He recognizes that students today expect learning to always be fun, challenging, and meaningful. There is already some movement toward gamification of education, but the future will involve much more than that. “It will transform how we encapsulate the knowledge and pass it on to the next generation of humans.”
In his time away from work, Suvajdzic has a wide variety of interests. He hikes, rides horses, bikes, plays the drums, practices karate, and works with his black labrador, certified as a Therapy Dog International. He also enjoys time with his two children. His ten-year-old son, Nesta, is particularly passionate about gaming, so Suvajdzic encourages him in spending hundreds of hours in the O2D studio where they play games together, talking about plot, characters and progression. Nesta is also learning PhotoShop. And amidst all this, Suvajdzic still finds time to work on his PhD in Theory of Arts and Media.
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