New individual special curriculum in game development

To master level and PhD students in computer science

Department of Computer Science, UiT, together with the local game industry will offer a 10 credit individual special curriculum in game development the spring semester 2015. The individual special curriculum is for master level and PhD students connected to a study programme in computer science.

Associate professor Anders Andersen and entrepreneur / developer Kim Daniel Arthur, Department of computer science (UiT) will be responsible for the special curriculum. The special curriculum will consist on lectures held by industry professionals and range across topics directly related to the deliverables of the special curriculum. The lectures are followed up by individual meetings with student teams in order to follow up and secure understanding and progress over the various stages of the project. The language of instruction is English.

January 15th 2015, a kick-off seminar will be arranged where the local game industry and PhD scholars tell their story and raise excitement for game development. The goal of the kick-Off seminar is to raise awareness and secure interest from the students to sign up for the special curriculum. The seminar will also be an opportunity for students to connect with game development professionals.

Time and place for the kick-off seminar: Thursday January 15th 2015 from 10:00 – 16:00 at TEKNOBYGGET 2.017AUD.

Content

The students will have designed, implemented and launched their own game for mobile and tablet platforms including connected online features.

Throughout the special curriculum the students will have gone through, and learnt, the complete cycle of game development from idea to launch. The special curriculum is focused on launching a functioning end product that marries user experience and technology.

During the development of the game the students will be creating features that span across client, server and database. The students will choose their own programming languages and technologies throughout the stack. Students are encouraged to use as many readily available engines, sdks or services to solve individual technical challenges rather than reinventing the wheel.

Course Evaluation

Given that the course has a very practical and hands-on approach the primary evaluation criteria is the successful completion and launch of a mobile game that includes connected online features. It is equally important that the choices related to featureset, technologies and programming languages are consistent with the user experience and usage patterns of the game itself.

In addition to being evaluated on the successful completion of the game students will be evaluated on their technical design and implementation within chosen technologies. From code patterns, architecture and implementation to database schema and clientserver communications. The evaluation is done in collaboration between representatives of the local game industry and the faculty itself.

The special curriculum exists in two variants, one for master level students (INF-3993) where students can work in groups but will get an individual grade on the work they have done. And two, if the special curriculum is considered relevant as part of the academic training component for a PhD student the course code INF-8810 PhD Special Curriculum in Computer Science must be used.

Best regards,

Jan Fuglesteg