Serious trend or just fun?

These are the questions that will be answered at the 7th Annual ROOTS conference, the 26-28th April in Bergen this year.

Game programming is more than entertainment – it is serious business. And few know better than Jørgen Tharaldsen of Funcom. Jørgen will take us through the pre-production, production, and post-production processes and the roles and infrastructure that must be in place to succeed. He will focus on the technology; explain the use of engine technology, and show us how middleware is used in a game perspective.

Middleware is just one element that Phil Carlisle will touch on in his tutorial. The life cycle of a game is longer than other software – notwithstanding the short shelf life of any one version. But the cost is extremely high according to Phil who teaches courses in Computer Games Software Development and Computer Games Design. He will explicitly link concepts of object oriented programming such as flexibility, modularity and object composition to the programming of a game. Without these concepts, it would be impossible to manage the risk, control the cost and still make a game that can be played on multiple platforms, and give a consistent behaviour to each of the unique elements in the story line.

And just where does the inspiration for these stories come from? Getting a game just right is as important to these firms as developing an online banking interface is to the banking industry. Gunnar Wille from The National Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment in Denmark will show us how inspiration can be drawn from the language of movies and theories of fragmented storytelling. These theories combined with game dramaturgy models have been applied to create tools for generating and developing new ideas.

This brings us to Chaim Gingold and his Magic Crayons, toy-like software that provides users with fun and highly leveraged tools for creative play. One way to approach the creation of new types of games and user interfaces is to approach the design process as a form of research and experimentation. In his closing keynote, Chaim discusses a variety of prototyping techniques and tactics for effectively researching new interactive design concepts. Chaim Gingold is noted for his work with the computer game Spore. He has jammed at the Indie Game Jam, presented at the Game Developers Conference, and is an active participant in the academic game studies community.