Transcript A First Course in Video Game Design

A First Course in Video
Game Design
Dr. Michael Katchabaw
Department of Computer Science
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
Outline
1) Computer Science at Western
2) Introducing a Course on Video Games
3) A Course on Video Game Design
4) Experiences
5) Future Directions
Computer Science
at Western
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The University of Western
Ontario, located in London,
Ontario, is home to 23,000
students and nearly 1,200
faculty members.
Computer Science at Western,
housed in Middlesex College
(shown at right), has 400
undergraduates, 140 graduate
students, and 25 research
faculty members.
Computer Science
at Western

Western offers several undergraduate and
graduate programs, and a wide variety of
courses:
Computer graphics.
 Artificial intelligence.
 Software engineering.
 Systems and networking.
 Theory of computation.
 Algorithms and data structures.
 And many, many more.

Computer Science
at Western

Like most universities and colleges,
Western did not offer any courses that
directly dealt with video games.
It offered all of the background courses
and core components of game
technology, but nothing that tied it all
together and put it in context.

A new course was clearly needed …
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Introducing a Course
on Video Games

The first thought was introduce the
course at the senior undergraduate level.

All such courses would first go before our
departmental curriculum committee, and
then on to other committees at the faculty
and university levels.
Departmental
Curriculum
Committee
Faculty
Curriculum
Committee
University
Curriculum
Committee
Introducing a Course
on Video Games

It was not thought that the chances for
success would be high this way.
Would the very idea of a course on video
games be acceptable?
 When this kind of course is rare, and has
never been done at Western before, how do
we know it will succeed?
 Would we have the instructional resources
within our department to support the
addition of such a course?

Introducing a Course
on Video Games

As a result, it was decided to introduce a
gaming course at the graduate level.
There is much more freedom in selecting
topics … it is essentially up to the Professor,
with approval of the Graduate Chair.
 There is also more flexibility if things do not
quite go as well as planned.

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With this, the course was formed.

Now, the trick was to decide what aspect of
video game development to cover in it …
A Course on Video
Game Design

To decide the perspective for the course,
our current curriculum was consulted.
We had courses covering the main technical
aspects of gaming (graphics, animation,
artificial intelligence, networking, and so on).
 We had courses covering many of the facets
of software development.


We needed something to bring it all
together just for game development.

A course on video game design!
A Course on Video
Game Design
Game
Design
Software Design
Technical Design
(Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Animation, Physics, Networking, …)
A Course on Video
Game Design: Topics
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Games in general
The evolution of video
games
Game genres
The early game
development process
Layers of design
Principles of game
design (generic and
genre-specific)
Storytelling
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Level design
Puzzle/obstacle design
Trade offs and warning
signs in game design
Preproduction and
production
Software lifecycle models
for game development
Technical issues
Ethical issues
The future of gaming
A Course on Video
Game Design: Texts
A Course on Video
Game Design: Texts
Main course text:
 B. Bates. Game Design: The Art and Business
of Creating Games. Prima Tech, 2001.
Technical references:
 K. Hawkins and D. Astle. OpenGL Game
Programming. Prima Tech, 2001.
 M. Collins, et al. Linux Game Programming.
Prima Tech, 2001.
 W. Engel and A. Geva. Beginning Direct3D
Game Programming. Prima Tech, 2001.
 T. Petchel. Java 2 Game Programming. Premier
Press, 2001.
A Course on Video
Game Design: Evaluation
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Marks for students were made up of
three main components.
Participation:
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
To encourage attendance and discussion.
Assignments:
Two medium-length research papers:
 An in-depth review of a game of their choice.
 A discussion of whatever they consider to be
the most significant in the history of gaming.
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A Course on Video
Game Design: Evaluation
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A group development project:
Each group had to develop a reasonably
large-sized game on their own.
 The game genre, target platform,
development environment, and so on
were up to each group to decide.
 Deliverables included a proposal, game
design document, technical design
document, testing document, and the actual
game itself (in source and binary format).
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A Course on Video
Game Design: Website
Course website: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS641b
Experiences
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Planning for the course on video game
design began in the summer of 2002.
This course began in January 2003, and
is scheduled to be completed at the end
of this April.
In setting up and teaching this course,
many valuable lessons were learned …
Experiences:
Setting up the Course
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Approval for the graduate course went
quite smoothly and without objections.
Obtaining some resources for the course,
however, was not as easy:
Finding suitable texts, and obtaining copies
was difficult. Traditional text publishers do
not carry them, and other trade publishers
were not cooperative.
 Getting software or development hardware
for the course was hard. Some companies
were very helpful; many others were not.

Experiences:
Setting up the Course

Shortly after announcing the course, we
were swamped with requests from
undergraduates wanting to take it.

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Dozens and dozens of e-mails!
Undergraduates, however, need special
permission and an 80%+ average to
enroll in graduate courses at Western.
A cross-listed course was added to let a
select few undergraduates in.
 Enrolment had to be limited though.
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Experiences:
Lectures
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The selection of course topics was very
well received by the students.
A lot of preparation time, however, was
required for each lecture.
There was not a single book with all of the
desired material for the course, so it often
required searching through multiple sources.
 Demonstrating concepts required the
collection of screen shots, videos, and game
saves, which can be time consuming.
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Experiences:
Lectures

It is surprising how cultural the notions of
video games and games in general are.
We have a very strong international student
population at Western, with students from
around the world.
 In many countries, video games are not as
common as they are here.
 Furthermore, the games people play in
general vary greatly from country to country.
 In some cases, age boundaries are starting
to show in many ways.
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Experiences:
Assignments
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Assignments for the course were very
well done and without any problems.
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Papers showed a great amount of insight,
and were generally a pleasure to read.
To assist with submissions, a system
of late coupons was used to allow
students to create their own extensions
as necessary.
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They were well used, but not abused.
Experiences:
Group Projects
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In many cases, group projects, did not go
as smoothly as individual assignments.
Each project started out reasonably well.
All of the games proposed were interesting
and innovative in a variety of ways.
 It was clear, however, that many projects had
serious scope issues.
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As project deadlines loom now, it would
appear that only one project will be fully
realized according to its original vision.
Experiences:
Group Projects
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What went wrong in the other projects?
Scope. They tried to do too much, and did
not heed warnings to the contrary.
 Feature bloat. In some cases, features were
actually added as the projects progressed.
 Asset development. A lot time and effort
was spent on graphics, sound, and so on.
 Tools and platforms. Most groups tried to
learn and use a new environment.
 Time. Workloads were often quite heavy.
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Future Directions
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Learn from experience:
Knowing our needs, make arrangements
for suitable teaching, text, software, and
hardware resources.
 Make adjustments to lecture material to
maintain currency.
 Add a more international flavour to
some discussions.
 More restrictions on group projects.
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Future Directions
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Next year, this course will be offered
as a cross-listed senior level special
topics course to both undergraduate
and graduate students.
After that:
Bring this course on as a regular offering?
 Investigate multi-disciplinary collaboration
with Visual Arts, Media Studies, and Music?
 Introduce a specialization in video game
development at the undergraduate level?
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