Introducing Game Development into the University Curriculum

Abstract

Integrating computer games development into computer science curriculum is gaining acceptance. However, the question is how this should be done. In our course on computer game development we present all necessary steps that a game project has to address, from design to publication and marketing, from the theoretical to the practical point of view. The goal is that each student makes a casual game for Apple iOS platform and possibly publishes it. The games are built on our xni framework for iOS, which is a subset of Microsoft’s xna. We take an iterative incremental approach to teaching game development, where we discuss a number of selected topics from various categories, such as gameplay design, graphics and artificial intelligence, each week. Thereafter the students receive mandatory and non-mandatory assignments that force them to add functionality to their game and, thus, steadily progress towards their goal. At the end of the course more than 20 % of all projects were ready for the Apple App Store, which, together with student pools saying that the course was one of the best executed courses they attended, confirms the viability of the suggested scheme.