Mobile Gaming And The Zune
- Conference
- Location
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Louisville, Kentucky
- Publication Date
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June 20, 2010
- Start Date
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June 20, 2010
- End Date
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June 23, 2010
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Computers in Education
- Page Count
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12
- Page Numbers
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15.876.1 - 15.876.12
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--16569
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/16569
- Download Count
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386
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Mobile Gaming and the Zune Abstract
Classes in mobile gaming are very popular with students and provide them with knowledge and programming skills that are in great demand in both industry and graduate research programs. These classes can provide experience in the following areas: software engineering, advanced programming in modern object-oriented environments, user-interface design, networking, real-time programming, as well as principles of game design and programming. Until recently, mobile gaming required machines that were either costly or required special licensing. The Microsoft Zune, however, avoids those problems. The Zune is relatively inexpensive and is supported by an excellent SDK and IDE, both of which are free. In this paper, we describe our experience teaching mobile gaming with the Zune. We explain how the Zune platform is used, we outline the projects we use, the topics covered in lecture, and we give examples of game developed by students. In addition, we provide student assessment of the course. We describe how the course supports our ABET course and program outcomes.
1. Introduction
Mobile gaming is one of the most important and growing segments of the computer games industry1. It drives hardware and software innovation in the smartphone market segment, particularly among iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices. Mobile gaming also drives innovation in the gaming console market, particularly for Sony and Nintendo.
Mobile gaming is a great educational opportunity.2 (See Kurkovsky3 for an excellent bibliography of work in this area.) Classes in mobile gaming are very popular with students and provide them with knowledge and programming skills that are in great demand in both industry and graduate research programs. The classes can provide experience in the following areas: software engineering, advanced programming in modern object-oriented environments, user-interface design, networking, real-time programming, as well as principles of game design and programming. In fact, gaming draws on physics and mathematics as well. All in all, mobile game programming is an excellent capstone undergraduate experience.
The downside to these classes is that they require hardware and programming environments that are expensive, or difficult to acquire (e.g., professional game-development kits) or both. The cost alone can
Birmingham, W. (2010, June), Mobile Gaming And The Zune Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16569
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