Software Development

(a subtopic of Applications)

Students aim for career in games. By Diarmuid Mitchell. BBC News (March 9, 2007). "Competition for jobs in video game development has never been higher. ... An increasing number of UK universities offer degree courses in games design and development at graduate and post-graduate level. Most degree programmes in computer games cover core programming skills, using languages like C++, and focusing on game elements like engine architecture, game physics and artificial intelligence (AI). ... Games publisher EA also works closely with a number of British universities, advising on course content and providing guest lecturers, while offering internships to university students."

CEO Q&A: TechExcel's Tieren Zhou. By Jason Stamper. Computer Business Review Online (July 31, 2007). "Jason Stamper interviews Tieren Zhou, founder, CEO and chief software architect of application lifecycle management (ALM) firm TechExcel, which started life in California but has a growing presence in the UK. Q. I see your PhD was in artificial intelligence. Do you think that background has given you a different perspective on the challenges in application development? A. Definitely. A lot of the early work I did was on expert systems for robots, enabling them to do analytical chemistry in a laboratory. In order to build such systems we needed a conceptual modelling system to translate our programs into actions. Starting with a conceptual model and then building that out into real-world building blocks gives you enough flexibility to allow for change. ... Q. You are talking about the specification being the common starting point for ALM, but other vendors often call it requirements-driven development. A. ...Call it knowledge-centric ALM. It's got artificial intelligence built in, knowledge management and search built in, and the specification is the standard for communication."

Degrees and Certificates in Video Game Development and Programming. By Laura Schneider. About.com: Tech Careers.

Video Games Are Their Major, So Don't Call Them Slackers. By Seth Schiesel. The New York Times (November 22, 2005; subscription req'd.). "Three decades after bursting into pool halls and living rooms, video games are taking a place in academia. ... Traditionalists in both education and the video game industry pooh-pooh the trend, calling it a bald bid by colleges to cash in on a fad. But others believe that video games - which already rival movie tickets in sales - are poised to become one of the dominant media of the new century. ... According to the International Game Developers Association, fewer than a dozen North American universities offered game-related programs five years ago. Now, that figure is more than 100, with dozens more overseas. ... 'The skills and methods of video games are becoming a part of our life and culture in so many ways that it is impossible to ignore,' said Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator who is now president of the New School, which includes Parsons. Parsons has offered game courses to graduate students for five years and this fall began an undergraduate program in game design. 'But if you just look at the surface of people playing games, you are missing the point, which is that games are all about managing and manipulating information,' Mr. Kerrey said. 'A lot of students that come out of this program may not go to work for Electronic Arts. They may go to Wall Street. Because to me, there is no significant difference -- except for clothing preference -- between people who are making games and people who are manipulating huge database systems to try to figure out where the markets are headed. It's largely the same skill set, the critical thinking. Games are becoming a major part of our lives, and there is actually good news in that.' ... Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the game developers' association, said that no firm figures were available for overall employment in the industry. But at bellwether Electronic Arts, employment has almost doubled since 2000, to roughly 6,450. Over the same period, the number of employees in Electronic Arts's creative operations - the people who actually make games - has almost tripled, to 4,300. At universities that have embraced video games, the curriculum varies. ... "

Microsoft aims for video game heights. Wanted: Programmer 'with severe god-complex.' By Dina Bass. Bloomberg News / available from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (March 5, 2005). "Microsoft Corp., already the biggest software company, is looking for a video-game programmer to help 'in our quest for world domination.' The ideal candidate: a 'megalomaniac genius with severe god-complex,' the company says on its Bungie Studios Web site. The artificial-intelligence engineer Microsoft seeks is one of about 60 people the Redmond company is hiring to create the next generation of 'Halo'.... Companies such as Microsoft, Electronic Arts Inc. and Sony Corp. are boosting payrolls to sharpen animation, music and story lines to capture a bigger share of the more than $20 billion a year spent on video games. ... The video-game industry now employs about 100,000 people in North America, according to the International Game Developers Association in San Francisco. Experienced programmers can make $86,000 a year; artists and animators can receive $64,000, and game designers get $64,000, according to a Game Developer magazine survey."

Schools grow as gaming industry comes of age. By Victor Godinez. The Dallas Morning News & Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services // available from MENAFN (January 5, 2005). "The industry that once relied on self-taught tinkerers is growing up, and SMU [Southern Methodist University] is among the universities rushing to prepare the next generation of gaming professionals. [Brian] Harris is a student in SMU's Guildhall, which offers an 18-month certificate program in the art and science of video game development. ... Game makers have been mostly home-schooled up to now, fiddling with code on their personal computers or designing add-on levels for existing games. But budgets for blockbuster titles are now $10 million to $20 million, and development teams of programmers, designers, artists, animators, musicians and artificial intelligence experts often number 100 or more. 'Because games are getting much more complex and teams are growing, it's becoming more of a structured discipline,' said Tim Willits, co-owner of id Software and lead designer at the company. ... Among the highest profile of the new video game courses is the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program in the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. It's a three-year master of fine arts program created earlier this year when EA, the industry's largest publisher, invested $8 million to create a training ground for designers and developers."

Games fans do it by degrees. By Michelle Pountney. Herald Sun (March 20, 2003). "Computer games enthusiasts have new heights to aspire to with Australia's first degree in computer games technology. But the degree is far from three years of playing computer games. Programming skills, physics, vector calculus, algorithm design and analysis, artificial intelligence, mobile computing and modelling behaviour are all in the textbooks for students enrolled in the La Trobe University course. Course head Dr John Rankin said the demand for highly skilled computer games programmers was growing fast in Melbourne. ... 'The global market exceeds $55 billion. A PlayStation-type game requires some 20 programmers and 20 animators to work over two years at up to $5 million, for a game that may be popular for perhaps only 18 months.'"

Texas School to Offer Women's Gaming Scholarship. Reuters (August 26, 2004). "As part of a drive to attract more women into the male-dominated video game industry, a program for aspiring game developers at Southern Methodist University will offer a women-only scholarship, organizers said on Thursday. The 'Game Development Scholarship for Women' will help cover costs for women attending the Guildhall, an 18-month certificate program at SMU designed by noted game developers."

Ultimate Diversions - Profiles: Michael Cheng. By Jennie Sue. AsianWeek (May 30, 2003). "Michael Cheng / Age: 27 / Title: Level Designer, Lucas Arts ... Cheng’s responsibilities as a level designer vary depending on the project assigned. 'The lead director will mock out a game engine, and the level designer starts building the micro-dynamics of what is to happen,' explains Cheng. So what exactly does he do to help build the micro-dynamics? 'It’s a combination of level modeling, A.I. [artificial intelligence] development and NPC [non-player characting] scripting, which is creating the interactions of non-main characters by scripting what they do. I help design the game mechanics - the setup and rules of how the game operates - which creates the user experience. I also work with environmental artists to model worlds to fit into the [overall] game design.'"

Marist to teach video, computer game skills. By Sarah Bradshaw. PoughkeepsieJournal.com (September 4, 2004). "Starting this month, Marist College will offer a noncredit online program leading to a certificate in computer and video game development in just one year. The program is offered in conjunction with the Game Institute, which provides professional training in the field of video game production and development. ... The online forum allows people from all over the world to enroll. Sales of game software generated more than $6 billion last year, according to data from NPD Interactive Entertainment. ... 'What we are seeing is a new trend in education. Using game development training and technology to teach concepts in fields like computer science, mathematics and physics creates a multidisciplinary system, which engages students in a way that most other learning models cannot,' [Joseph] Meenaghan said. Students are required to take classes in game mathematics, artificial intelligence for games, and computer, graphics and network programming."

Tribes - Vengeance Designer Diary. Irrational hopes to make your enemies seem smarter than the average bear. By Marc Atkin. IGN.com (December 3, 2003). "Artificial Intelligence (AI) - the art of making computer controlled characters look smart. In games, though, the goal isn't so much to give them human-like intelligence (which is one of the Holy Grails of computer science research and is what mad scientists are currently working on in their labs around the world), but to make them entertaining to play with and against (which is still 'difficult', but certainly more doable). ... Before I joined Irrational, I actually used to be one of those aforementioned mad scientists, and I'm intrigued by the idea that it might be possible to bring some of the state of the art AI techniques currently being worked on in research labs to our game. ... So why aren't AI's smarter? Well, there's the obvious reason that it takes lot of effort to write good AI. There's also the issue that even a reasonably sophisticated AI takes a lot of CPU time - CPU time that is often desperately needed by the graphics engine, for example. But a more fundamental reason is that when you try to add all the special cases and events to the AI that you would like it to react to intelligently, the code gets very complicated very fast. ... I don't believe it has to be this way, though, and I spent the first part of the project designing and implementing a general AI engine that makes it easier to set up a lot of different behaviors for an AI. One of its central features is that it allows our designers to tell an AI not to do just one thing, but a large number of things."

'Lord' Effects Rock - See how amazing special effects help make 'Return of the King' an epic film. By Tracey Marx. TechTV (December 17, 2003). "Weta Digital's most impressive piece of technology is simply called Massive. Director Peter Jackson, who helped create Weta in 1993, demanded battles and armies beyond the size of anyone's imagination. 'All tribute has to be given to a young guy called Steven Regelous, who realized Peter's vision through a piece of code writing,' says Richard Taylor, FX supervisor, Weta Workshop. Weta Digital designed Massive, software that 'teaches' characters to fight other characters using artificial intelligence. The software, a work-in-progress for more than three years, gives characters a repertoire of military moves pre-taught through motion capture. The AI would determine their ability to win or lose a given battle."

Disney star joins CMU's new entertainment technology center. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 16, 2002). "He's worked as a professional juggler, a magician's apprentice and a stand-up comedian. He's designed amusement park attractions. He even married a clown. So why would Jesse Schell leave the bright lights of the entertainment world to work on real-time interactive stimulation at Carnegie Mellon University? ... By jumping from Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney's research and development lab in Los Angeles, to CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, the 32-year-old computer scientist isn't changing careers so much as he is locale. Real-time interactive stimulation, after all, is just a euphemism for games -- video games. ... Last year, U.S. consumers spent $9.4 billion on game software and devices -- more than was spent on movie tickets. Worldwide, the market for videogames totals $28 billion. ... [A]s he pursued a degree in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he found that his studies on artificial intelligence drew him into storytelling projects. ... Schell will be teaching a course on game design. "A lot of people think they would like to design games because they like to play games," he said. "That's like saying, 'Hey, I like taking baths, so maybe I'll become a plumber.'"

Game-Design Courses Gain Favor. By Claudia H. Deutsch. The New York Times (April 1, 2002; no-fee reg. req'd). "'Games are interactive.' They are also a hot growth area. The Rochester Institute, whose department of information technology just started the first master's program in computer game design, estimates that the $20 billion computer game industry will grow to a $100 billion-a-year business within a decade. ... Students, recruiters and other game executives say that entry-level game designers rarely get more than $45,000, and experienced designers rarely earn more than $120,000. ... What keeps the students motivated, though, is their love of games, combined with the intellectual challenge of game design. Animated movies have fixed plots, but with a game, each image is predicated on the player's previous move, so the game must be programmed with a form of artificial intelligence. ... Only Carnegie Mellon seems to have already bridged the left brain-right brain divide. Its Entertainment Technology Center, which offers courses in many forms of computer animation and computer-generated effects, is jointly run by the College of Fine Arts and the School of Computer Science, which each providing a co-director. The center accepts half its students based on their computer skills, the other half for their visual acumen."

The name of this game is resumes -- and fun. New UW program on thinking inside the Xbox and GameCube fills fast. By Ruth Schubert. Seattle Post-Intelligencer (December 31, 2001). "The UW's yearlong, evening Certificate Program in Game Development begins Jan. 10. So many people want to while away their workdays creating ways to have fun -- and get paid an average of $61,000 a year -- that the university had to turn away more applicants than it accepted. ... In the second half of the program, students will learn more advanced techniques, including artificial intelligence and special effects."

The Software Developer as Movie Icon. Editorial by Warren Harrison. IEEE Software (January/February 2003; Vol. 20, No. 1, pages 5 - 7). "As a college professor, I often get an opportunity to speak with incoming freshmen who have decided to major in computer science. Virtually all these young people share a single attribute: they have no idea what a professional software developer does. This means that many students who pick this career will either be unsuccessful or, worse yet, successful at a career they'll hate until they retire. At the same time, many students who would find the profession enjoyable and be quite good at it might not give it a second thought."

Off to college to major in ... video games? 'Video game studies' may sound oxymoronic, but academia is beginning to take it seriously. By Mark Clayton. The Christian Science Monitor (August 29, 2003). "Always pressing forward to new intellectual frontiers, American higher education is now probing an academic realm sure to produce the words that will thrill parents: 'Mom, Dad, I've decided to major in video games!' ... Indeed, 'video game studies' is an oxymoron to many faculty. As a result, the study of video games - in computer science, art, and sociology - is often cloaked in euphemisms such as 'interactive media' or 'digital arts.' .... Recently, though, video games seem to be gaining academic stature - perhaps enough to dispense with the euphemisms. ... 'There is this critical need for the game designers of the future to be broadly educated in the liberal arts,' [Janet Murray at Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Communication, and Culture] says. 'It's not surprising that several people working in game design at higher levels hold degrees in film.'"

Related Pages

• AI Courses
• Automatic Programming
• Careers in AI
• Video Games