Joining The Game was a panel session I slipped along to, and my first full session of the conference. The panel was run by representatives of UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Charlotte and EA Games. By the time I found the room it had already started, but I still managed to secure myself a good seat at the back.
I took brief notes, but found the many things being discussed interesting:
Why games? They can be used as both a way of teaching computer science and as a means to attract women into the field. As per good ole Wittgenstein, we were asked to consider what defined our notion of a game, considering the (now classic) example of second life as still constituting a game.
The panellists introduced the nature of working in the games industry; interdisciplinary and well-rounded experience with a strong need to be able to communicate both technically and non-technically. To get into the industry you really need to be well rounded (as it is potentially the hardest area in computer science); able to create fun games and ideas, strong C or C++ programming skills, memory management, architecture, networking, game AI all being useful.
Wu's Castle sounded like an interesting example of using a game to teach for loops in programming, and it was mentioned to have proven significant learning games. I am looking forward to hearing more about this in the future, as my department is keenly interested in games for teaching programming.
The future of gaming using pervasive technologies was briefly mentioned, especially for GPS on mobile devices. I wish more had been said on this topic, beyond mention that there was currently only really one game of this type (possibly in Italy) so far. It had me wanting to leap out of my seat and mention the exciting possibilities with Loco... But I refrained, as the queue for questions was longer than the time available.
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Johanna Hunt
Official GHC 2007 Blogger
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