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Students Tackle Game Development Profile by Jay Watamaniuk
Course information:http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/299/ What is your background and experience?Nathan: After finishing my PhD in artificial intelligence at UCLA in 2003, I moved from Los Angeles up to Edmonton to work as a post-doc at the University of Alberta (UofA). People often ask why I'd leave California to come to Edmonton. The department at the University of Alberta is known for its work on games and artificial intelligence, so I was excited to have the opportunity to come work here, and to do things like help put together this course. Can you give us a little background on what this course is and how it developed?
Our department has a lot of experience in game-related research, so it is natural for us to expand that into an undergraduate course offering. But, we also wanted to create a course where students could get experience working with other students of different backgrounds to create a common project. In real life, the design students and computer science students have to work together, but they don't do it very often as university students. Finally, we want to combat the stereotype that Computer Science is a boring major where you spend weeks at a time locked in the basement programming. Given a lot of planning and some great people who love games we were able to put something together to fit these needs. Jonathan Schaeffer initially pushed the idea, and a few other faculty here have been instrumental in the course design. We also had a high school girl in the WISEST program working with us for the summer. What has been the response of the students to this program?Nathan: It's been very positive. Many more students are interested in the course than we currently have capacity to admit, and I think the students in the course have really enjoyed it. How often do you hear students complain that a course is too short? What has surprised you the most in running this course?
Even more, I've been impressed with the quality of stories that the groups have written. I've been engaged in their proposals and other design documents and I'm looking forward to playing the final products. Can you give us an outline of how the course is set-up and what is expected of the students?Nathan: Sure. The lecture material is pretty straightforward, covering everything from narrative and design to project management and artificial intelligence. We're also covering social issues like violence in games. For the project, the students are split into interdisciplinary groups of around four members. They have to complete many of the same design stages as a real game. They have to frame the story, putting together a design document and a storyboard. Then they pitch the story to us and finish things up with a playable game at the end of the term. They are probably creating something more similar to a first prototype, but we'll know better when the course ends in a few weeks. I understand you had some BioWarians in to watch student presentations. Can you give a little more background on that and how it went?Nathan: Yes; that was very useful. As I mentioned, the students had to pitch their ideas as if they were up for funding. So, they all had trailers for their games, and gave project overviews. It was quite fun to watch.
How do you see this course developing in the future?Nathan: This year is really devoted to testing out the course, so we're going to take the things we've learned this semester and integrate them next semester. For instance, we need to streamline the tool-learning phase at the beginning of the course. Ultimately, we hope to expand our game-related course offering to more than just this course. ~
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Nathan: This is a second year course designed to give students an overview of the game-design process as well as experience in building a game. They do this in Neverwinter Nights using the Aurora toolkit and 
Nathan: I think two things. First, that the course has gone so smoothly. Given that we were installing a new lab and putting new tools together for the course, that aspect has gone well.
Because I've never done a real pitch in industry myself, we thought it would be valuable to have industry reps in. So, Assistant Director of Design Kevin Barret and Community Manager Jay Watamaniuk came in for the pitches and gave very useful feedback. Students were aghast earlier in the course when I told them they should create short games, but when BioWare people tell them the same thing, they listen!
