I find it interesting that two of my first year courses have already set a game development project. Beyond the obvious it will keep students interested what other reasons are there behind setting these out?
In my own personal experience, game creation is a complicated and involved process. Game develpment forces the dev into a critical thinking paradgim: tons of math (statistics and probability), systems engineering (got to make the rules and make them fair) and other concerns about balance and avoiding dominant strategies. Game creation forces the student to think beyond the standard "float cash, cost, change;" paradigm that I have run accross in many books/courses that have to do with programming and software eningeering.
While you are thinking about games I invite you to visit my inprogress MMO game at http://scarletrazor.com it is still early beta but I have the minimal function active and will be expanding the framework into a more complex game as time allows. It is free to sign up and play so have fun if you are inclined.
Keywords: course work, development, gaming
Comments
I think it's not a bad way to keep student interested and as you said allows them to expand beyond just standard thinking and reading from text books, divided into teams to allow people to take on more suited roles than just being given out a task they may resent is probably not a bad thing,
I would suggest give it a chance and see how it pans, out almost abit tedious but for the right reasons I think,as stated, it mabye hard work and a pain in the back side along the way but I think the end result will be encouraging to most and good luck to everyone doing said projects!
As you stated otrher skills may also be developed along the way which are apparent to be transferable! Working in teams, communication and organisational skills are just some I can see will be picked up along the way which should also help in other modules etc.
David Graham Beisly on Friday, 12 October 2007, 10:50 BST # |
I actually think that your thoughts here explains why games are perfect for course work. It gives the good student space to excel, and also allows everybody to show their capabilities in a wide range of topics...
On top of that, being forced to critical thinking is probably the best thing a University does ;-)
Karsten Oster Lundqvist on Friday, 12 October 2007, 11:12 BST # |
The last couple of years for the final BIG Programming (SE1SA5) practical we have offered a choice of developing a game or something more subject related (last year the choice was a Mastermind like board-game or a chatbot). Both years about 20% of the class took the non-game challenge.
Shirley Williams on Friday, 12 October 2007, 11:29 BST # |
Thaddeus Aid on Saturday, 13 October 2007, 18:20 BST # |