Course syllabus

Course-PM

DAT380 / DIT468 Current Trends in Gaming LP2 HT22 (7.5 hp)

Course is offered by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Contact details

Course purpose

There are many technological and societal trends that impact on the design of games. Gaming is a discipline in which the state of the art changes regularly and with great speed. This course is focused on identifying currently important trends in the industry and exploring new and novel technologies with the aim of enabling students to develop familiarity with important concepts. This course is intended to be responsive and aligned with external trends in the industry, and so its content will vary on a year-by-year basis in line with that aim.

Schedule

See the course calendar or TimeEdit for rooms and times, but the general pattern is:

The rooms change week to week, so keep an eye out for that. Most of the time we have Jupiter 121, 122 or SVEA 239, but some of the sessions are in other rooms in SVEA, and a few are in Jupiter. Titles of sessions (Lecture / Group Work / etc) are provisional and may change.  Times and places shouldn't change from what's in the calendar, but transcription errors can creep in.  If they do change, we'll post an announcement.  Keep an eye on these!

TimeEdit is a room booking system, not a scheduler - where there is a disagreement between the calendar and TimeEdit, go with the calendar.

Course literature

Each module has its own course literature, see each respective module. Please note that literature from module 1 is expected to be used as appropriate for assignments in the two later modules, and such appropriate use is part of the grading on the assignments in module 2 and module 3.

Course design

The course is divided into three separate modules:

The first module introduces theories and methods regarding creativity and provides a foundation for the work in the later modules. The two later modules look at one technological area each.  Module 2 focuses on using physics systems in Unity to create interesting experimental game assets.  Module 3 looks at how those assets might be incorporated into an augmented reality world.

Student Representatives and Course Evaluation

Information regarding the course evaluation process at Chalmers.

Information about being a student representative.

These are the Chalmers student representatives for this course:

Mårten Elfving emarten@student.chalmers.se 

Elin Högman Möller elinhogm@student.chalmers.se 

Amanda Lind Jonsson amandajo@student.chalmers.se 

Marcus Oliver Sestan Beidert sestan@student.chalmers.se 

These are the GU student representatives for this course:

Arturs Umbrasko gusumbar@student.gu.se 

Antonio Mangoni Di S Stefano gusmangoan@student.gu.se

Learning objectives and syllabus

The course has the following learning objectives divided into three categories. More specific learning objectives for each module are listed in the respective pages.

  • Examine current technological and social trends in gaming.
  • Apply creativity techniques with the intention of exploring innovative new gameplay concepts
  • Analyse the potential opportunities and threats associated with contemporary gaming trends
  • Implement game designs to explore novel, emerging techniques
  • Assess the ethical and societal impact of contemporary trends in gaming

The syllabus for DAT380 can be found here. The course plan for DIT468 can be found here.

Examination form

GU and Chalmers
The course has the following grades: U, 3, 4, & 5. These grades are also given for each assignment in the course. In order to receive a passing grade on the entire course, a student needs to receive at least a 3 on all assignments. The course grade given will be a weighted average of the grades on the modules.