Cluster 5: Video Games: The Design of Fun from Concept to Code
Today’s students play a wide variety of computer games. These games are highly interactive, featuring rich graphics, detailed rule sets, networked game play, and often complex social interactions among players. Under the hood, computer games are highly complex software systems, using sophisticated graphics and artificial intelligence techniques, guided by a design process focused on achieving the qualities of engagement, agency and fun. The goal of this cluster is to introduce high school students to the computer science and design science elements of creating computer games.
Prerequisite: One year of Algebra II.
All students in this cluster will be enrolled in the following
courses.
Technologies of Fun: Game Graphics, AI and Networking
Instructor: Gillian Smith, (Computer and Electrical Engineering)
This course introduces students to four fundamental technologies used in games: real-time graphics, artificial intelligence, networking, and physical controllers. Each of the topics is introduced in the context of a game engine, an infrastructure toolkit that integrates multiple game technologies, allowing students to understand how all these technologies come together to create a functioning game. Students will work in teams to create a small, complete game, helping them to see how all these technologies come together to create a player experience and giving them something to take home and share with friends as a lasting reminder of their COSMOS experience.
Structure of Fun: Science of Game Design
Instructor: Professor Jim Whitehead (Computer Science Department)
This course provides an interdisciplinary overview of the key processes and scientific knowledge used in the design of computer games. The course will cover introductory ideas from classical game theory as well as how games are designed that explore social or humanitarian issues. The course will also explore how games are designed to appeal to different genders. Topics from psychology will be addressed, including the design of games for training and the difficulties in transferring learning from games to real world situations. Social aspects of game design will also be covered. Students in the course will explore game design issues by working in teams to create one or more paper-based game concept designs.
Transferable Skills: Tools for Success
It may or may not surprise you that being a university researcher
requires a whole host of skills outside of the specific scientific
knowledge required of your chosen discipline or specialty. It requires
communication skills such as the ability to present your work in
writing and orally. It requires competencies in the realm of information
technology including the ability to find and judge (the validity
of) information and use a variety of hardware and software tools
(e.g. spreadsheets, databases, statistics software, other data manipulation
tools). It requires all of those skills required to effectively
conduct research such as data collection, analysis and interpretation,
critical thinking and problem solving as well as the ability to
conduct laboratory and/or field work. And, of course, a baseline
competency in English, science, mathematics and computers is critical.
The governing mission of the UCSC COSMOS Transferable Skills course
is to promote students’ future academic (and professional)
success through the exploration and development of transferable
skills: i.e. those competencies that students develop while in school
which facilitate academic achievement, the eventual transition into
the work-force and which are applicable in many other life situations.
Go to course information for:
- Logic, Cryptography and Number Theory: Reason and Riddles*
- Engineering
the Future: Autonomous Robots and Nanotechnology*
- Under
the Sea: Exploring Marine Organisms and Their World*
- Everyday
Chemistry: From Perfumes to Pollution*
- Video Games: The Design of Fun - From Concept to Code*
- Chemistry
and Mathematics: From Life to Thought*
- Points in Space: Astronomy and Linear Algebra*
- Marine Mammals and Oceanography: From Prey to Predators
- Particle and Astrophysics: Investigations of the Minuscule to the Massive
