The video game industry is a very significant and important software industry, both for entertainment and serious applications. Building a high quality game is a surprisingly difficult and challenging process; exploitation of the latest technologies does not necessarily lead to success. In the end, much of a game's success (or failure) is dictated by its design. In other words, does the game offer engaging, immersive, and rewarding gameplay to the player, resulting in an overall satisfactory experience?
This course provides an in-depth examination of video game design and best practices to study the issues and challenges that arise when developing games for both entertainment and serious applications. Topics include: the history of video games; game development teams, processes, and management; principles of game design, game play, and balance; game genres and genre-specific design issues; plot, story, and level design; technical design issues with respect to foundations from computing (graphics, artificial intelligence, networking, software engineering, and so on), and elsewhere (physics, anatomy, language studies, and so on); ethical issues in video games and the gaming industry; and the future of gaming.
| Lecture Hours: | 10:00am - 4:00pm, Fridays, IBM Toronto Lab |
| Class dates: May 6, 13, 20, and 27, June 3 and 10 (tentative) |
| Prerequisites: | Enrolment in a ConGESE program, with appropriate registration |
| Antirequisites: | CS 641 - Game Design and Best Practices if taken in Winter 2006 |
| Instructor: | Michael J. Katchabaw |
| Office: | Middlesex College 28H |
| Department of Computer Science | |
| The University of Western Ontario | |
| London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B7 | |
| Office Hours: | By appointment, as necessary |
| E-Mail: | katchab@csd.uwo.ca |
| Phone: | 519-661-4059 |
Two books are recommended for this course, and may be available for purchase from a variety of sources:
The course will address as many of the following topics as time will allow:
Course lecture notes will be made available in PowerPoint and PDF formats on the course website on a weekly basis, as they are developed. They are provided as a courtesy by the course instructor. Possessing (and even reading) these notes is not a suitable substitute for attending lectures.
The course website is accessible at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/ConGESE. Lecture notes, project information, and class information will be posted on this website. You are responsible for reading this information frequently.
Students may be given access to an account provided by the Department of Computer Science on either the senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL, or on the Research Network, or both. For the purposes of this course, however, it is likely more convenient to use local computing facilities, since there are no specific hardware requirements for projects or assignments in this course. In accepting the account(s), a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct.
We will occasionally need to send e-mail messages to the class, or to students individually. An e-mail list will be constructed based on your preferred e-mail account. It is each student's responsibility to read this e-mail on a frequent and regular basis, or to have it forwarded to an alternative e-mail address if preferred.
However, note that e-mail at some e-mail providers may have quotas or limits on the amount of space they dedicate to each account. Unchecked e-mail may accumulate beyond those limits and you may be unable to retrieve important messages from your instructors. Losing e-mail is not an acceptable excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.
Grades will be based on group project work worth 55% and individual assignments worth 45%. This work is split into separate deliverables including three pitches (each worth 15%, completed individually), design documentation (20%, completed in a group), and a game demo (35%, also completed in a group).
Every effort will be made to have project components marked and handed back within 3 weeks of the handin date, preferably sooner. If we are unable to comply with our intended return dates, revised dates will be posted on the course website.
If you are unable to meet a course requirement due to illness or other serious circumstances, you must provide valid medical or other supporting documentation to your home university's Dean's office as soon as possible and contact your instructor immediately. It is the student's responsibility to make alternative arrangements with their instructor once the accommodation has been approved and the instructor has been informed.
| Individual Pitch #1: | 15% (light) | Assigned May 6, 2011 | Due May 13, 2011 |
| Individual Pitch #2: | 15% (light) | Assigned May 13, 2011 | Due May 20, 2011 |
| Individual Pitch #3: | 15% (light) | Assigned May 20, 2011 | Due May 27, 2011 |
| Group Design Documentation: | 20% (medium) | Assigned May 27, 2011 | Due June 10, 2011 |
| Group Game Demo: | 35% (heavy) | Assigned May 27, 2011 | Due June 30, 2011 |
If, for any reason, the project schedule given above cannot be adhered to, the project marks will be pro-rated.
Submission
It is your responsibility to keep up-to-date backups of project disk files in case of system crashes or inadvertently erased files. Retain disk copies of all material handed in, as well as the actual graded version, to guard against the possibility of lost projects or errors in recording marks. It is not safe to discard these materials until you are satisfied that your final mark for the course has been computed properly.
Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy according to their home university.
Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence.
Projects are either individual or group efforts, with each group expected to act individually. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work must be an individual effort. Incidents that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty will be reported.
The standard departmental penalty for assignments that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty is, for the student's first offence, a mark of zero for the assignment, with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the assignment also being applied.
While the group project is expected to be a team effort, you must still follow these rules and avoid plagiarism when it comes to using other people's code and so on in the project. While the use of other code in your project is encouraged, you must clearly identify all such code in your project documentation. Failure to do so will be considered a scholastic offence.
The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work and programs in electronic form for plagiarism checking.
All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com/).
The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write assignments or take-home tests for the students who hire them. Having employed the same tutor as another student is not a legitimate defense against an accusation of collusion, should two students hand in assignments judged similar beyond the possibility of coincidence.