Laboratory & Course

Gaming Communities

in SS 08

Computer games have become a usual entertainment in our today’s life. The variety of the games’ styles, interactions and features expands explosively every day. The human desire for playing virtual games can be made evident concerning the booming market of the gaming consoles, machines designed for playing use mainly. In this lab the newest generation consoles, e.g. Wii, Xbox, PS3, will be used.

Playing the same game connects people to a group. The game becomes a shared group subject and the players form a community. They will be interesting in discussing and arguing about it, its quality and features, making appointments for the collective games or even exchange experience. In turn an enjoyable community can attract new players and keep existing ones. Obviously, the design of successful communication sphere for gamers is essential. However, a successful community creation and support is a constant challenge.

The aim of the lab is investigation and analysis of the communication needs of players of certain games and development of a perfect community for their support. The lab is offered to a maximum class size of 18 students. Four reviews will be used to present the results of the lab and for discussions.

Already at the end of the winter semester an introduction meeting will take place. During semester holidays several playing sessions will be offered for the lab participants :-), so they can get familiar with the console and computer games. At the beginning of the summer semester there will be an introduction lecture about communities and their structure, where the lab participants will receive the required theoretical knowledge. The practical part will be started with analysis of existing gaming communities and tools for their support. Based on the results of this investigation the students will have to establish their guidelines for creating a perfect community, which they will present at the first review. During the rest of the semester the students will build up a community for chosen console games and develop corresponding support tools. We perform an iterative process beginning from the identification of community needs and ending with the community tests of the implemented supporting tools. The results of each process step will be reflected in the reviews two through four.   

The theoretical lectures of the lab build on existing lectures in our faculty such as Game Design and Development, Software Technology, CSCW and Groupware, Virtual and Augmented Reality.   

During the whole semester, the lab participants have the community-system BSCW at their disposal, in order to interchange problem solving information among themselves and their tutors and to extend their knowledge. 

Details and dates of the meetings can be found in our detailed schedule of the lab and the lecture series.

Schedule

Details for lab participants

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