I had wanted to conduct more research on or at least experimental development of AI in the game industry, but the options to do so in Vanocuver are rather limited. So when a position opened up for a professorship in game research at a local university I had to apply. I thus became a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology.
Why did I only stay two terms? It was a combination of factors: I had left a job I liked doing interesting AI and ML work and taken a steep paycut to spend my time teaching courses and slowly working towards having funding and actually getting some graduate students to establish a research program. I was able to do no research in my first year there. Instead, I had to stress about teaching two unfamiliar courses with no support until the second time I taught one of them when Amber, now a good friend, made my life a lot easier as the teaching assistant for the course. There were many good moments, but I am not someone who takes being lied to and manipulated lightly. As a result, the couple of bad apples that were there to get a degree by plagiarising, bribing and lying caused me more stress than I’ve ever felt in any job. I was told that it’s not worth reporting this plagiarism (clearly nobody had, as other profs I talked to didn’t even know the process to do so despite knowing that the problem was pervasive) and I should just let it slide. I’m (sadly?) too honest and stubborn a person to do that. It was then that I found out that the process of reporting and proving plagiarms at SFU is cumbersome, archaic, and appears to favour the student in that the slightest omission of following the correct protocol invalidates the whole process. And these are students who’ve been known to hire lawyers for the proceedings, I’m told. So, I followed protocol, but while filling out cumbersome plagiarism report forms in great detail over the holidays instead of playing with my young son it dawned on my that this might not be worth my time. I stuck it out the next term through the required meetings with these bad apples with bribes, lies, faked Dropbox screenshots, sick parents that were suddenly healthy when convenient … the list goes on. Other faculty members told me that I would develop a thicker skin and would find this easier in 5 years or so. That’s not a price I was willing to pay. Now, I have friends who are clearly energized by this type of detective work and love calling out students on their crap. Good for them, not good for me. I think I did an acceptable job actually teaching the courses, at least good enough that the program director took me aside toward the end of my job there and told me that my teaching evaluations were too high: I was clearly spending too much energy on teaching. I had already announced I was quitting at that point, but being told that I was doing too good a job at something that was part of my job reaffirmed that this was not a place for me. I did get my research funding, which I kept and hoped to spend on students in industry but due to restrictions on the money barely did.
All that said, and as said before, there were many great moments teaching my students and I made some good friends. Sébastien, one of my undergraduate students and I are even publishing one of the games that his project group started for my class. I am still very sad that this opportunity did not work out for me, and I wish I had managed to turn my career towards working in games in a research-y environment again. I did learn a lot about myself and my limits.