Objective
The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of having a mobile game
development course in Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSE)
Department of Miami University. Different alternatives learning objectives for the
course was considered, and all related data was collected between April 6 and April
22 in year 2011. The related data includes:
1) Interviews with relevant faculty about the course taken in Miami University
2) Survey primarily sampled from students majoring in Computer Science, IMS,
and Software Engineering in Miami University
3) Interview with faculty members outside Miami University
4) Online research complements with other data to cover topics such as
textbooks, cost, and learning objectives.
Introduction
From the information security to the (pilot) mobile development course to be
launched this summer, CSE department has been rather successful at introducing
new courses to keep up with the growth and evolution of computers. To help the
department to determine whether it is feasible to create a new course to respond to
the increasing demand of mobile gaming market, we wrote this report to your
consideration.
Faculty’s response, physical practicality, cost, and student’s interest are factors we
consider to be especially important. These can be influenced by how the course is
structured. Therefore, we have proposed and analyzed several alternatives based on
different combinations of mobile platform, topics to cover, prerequisites, and cost
mitigation methods.
Alternatives
From the survey results, it appears the only two main mobile platforms students use
and has shown interest in are Android and iOS. We will be focusing on these two
platforms. All other criteria is branched off by the choice of platforms.
Methodology
Surveys
Since we believe those students that are interested are most relevant to the study, we did
not take a simple random sample of all students in Miami. An online survey link was sent
out to all students in CSE, IMS, and Engineering department. We recognize the survey
may be biased towards the interested students because those who are not interested may
not take the survey at all. [To provide a large sample, we also distributed printed surveys
to account for at least 100 samples.] Multiple cross-tabulate views of the survey was
created and analyzed to identify and evaluate subgroup of students who own iOS against
subgroup of students who own Android devices. We also evaluated subgroup of students
based on different majors against each other.
Interviews
We have interviewed Dr. Bachmann, Gannod, and Zmuda in Miami University. The
questions we asked were attached in the Addendum of this report. Dr. Kiper has
suggested us to interview them due to their professional interests related to this area.
We have also requested to interview three faculties of other universities who have had
experience teaching mobile game development courses. The questions we asked were
also attached in the Addendum. Due to limited amount of time we have for this project,
only those that replied before April 15th are included in the report.
Cost Estimation
Through a combination of surveys, interviews, and online research, we included expected
license, device, subscription, and maintenance fees minus lab fees for each alternative. To
do the estimation correctly, we asked students on how much they are willing to pay for
the course’s lab fee, and faculties on what estimate they have on costs.
Results
[Survey data not sufficient. We have included charts and
results that has already shown trends that are not likely
to change.]
Using the survey results we can analyze the results
and compare them with each other to serve as a background
for the class, because without students a class can not be
approved. 100% of people that took the survey said they
were going to take higher CSE classes than the ones listed.
First of all we wanted to get a sense of students interests
and also what kind of mobile device they own.
Looking at the first chart, which was run on a 5-point
scale, we can see that a majority of students liked to develop
on Android and iOS platforms. One thing to notice is that in
the following graph more students own an iPhone, but yet
more people would still like to develop on Android.
Figure 3 shows how Android users compare with
iPhone users in their interests in development. IPhone users
just slightly preferred to develop on an iOS platform over the
Android platform, indicating interest to develop applications
on both platforms. On the other hand, Android users do not
have substantial interesting to learn how to develop games
in iOS devices.
The following graph shows some topics that could be
covered in the mobile game development course and from
the students perspectives it can be seen that collision
detection, 2D, and 3D graphics were topics with with highest
scores.
Also noticed in the survey is the fact that for all students
[%] would be willing to pay at least $10 outside of the
required textbook and other course material. [%] said they
would pay more than $50.
[Chart and Results for candidate prerequisites. It might
change after we get back IMS survey results.]
[Textbook research not completed. Interview: ⅓ completed,
expected to complete by April 14, and information combined
to here in April 15.]
Textbook Name
iPhone® Game
Development
(Chris Craft, Jamey
McElveen)
Platform
Price
iOS
Free/$31.17
3D for iPhone®
Apps with
Blender and
SIO2 (Tony
Mullen)
iOS
Free/$26.12
iPhone Game
Development (Paul
Zirkle, Joe Hogue)
iOS
Free/$22.85
(Electronic/
Hard Copy)
Special Topics:
Kindle: $24.69
Google: $32.99
Overlaps with
game design,
intro to SDK,
Collision
detection, GPS,
Accelerometer,
Compass
Visual
Quartz, OpenGL
ES [2D/3D intro]
H2H, P2P
Network
31 Days of
Activities/Sampl
iPhone Apps
es
provides 31
examples/exercis
es.
Code snippets and
step-by-step
instructions.
Structure
Topical, from easy
to difficult. More
suitable to less
experienced
programmers.
Textbook Name Learn Blackberry
Games
Development
(Carol Hamer,
Kindle: $23.51
Google: $25.99
Kindle: $15.39
Google: $15.39
Accelerometer, intro
to SDK.
OpenGL ES
No specific coverage
Step by step
instructions in
chapter 4.
Top-Down
(Application
Framework à Game
State Framework à
2D/3D Game
Engine) Not many
(complete) hands-on
examples in the
beginning.
Andrew Davison)
Platform
Blackberry
Price
Paperback:
(Electronic/
$24.95
Hard Copy)
Kindle: $22.46
Google: $31.19
Special Topics: Accelerometer,
GPS, SMS,
Selling Games
Visual
SVG, OpenGL
ES [2D and 3D]
Network
P2P, MMORPG
Activities/Sampl
No practice
es
problems after
each chapter.
Step by step
instructions/code
.
Black and white
photos.
Structure
Genre-orientated
Discussion
While gathering data in our feasibility study we found
some relationships that we would like to discuss here. First
of all the student interest of creating mobile game
applications is there. [%] of those surveyed said that they
would be interested in taking a course in mobile game
development. While this demand is there among the
students, an appropriate instructor and faculty support is a
huge aspect of course creation. This is a main part that this
course would seam to be missing from faculty interviews
conducted thus far. There are far too many courses that
have been approved, but still sit there without being
implemented in our current curriculum. This can be attributed
to faculty already being very busy with their schedules and
having limited time. Another factor in lack of faculty able to
teach a course such as this one is the sear amount of
professors that have mobile development experience. Out of
the many faculty that we talked to there was only a couple
that came up when asked "What professors would have
mobile development experience?"
Another item that came up while looking over the
survey results was the vast support for development for
Android and iOS verses other options such as Blackberry.
While the market is currently going in favor of Android and
iOS is was interested to see Blackberry only getting [%] of
the vote. This clearly tells us that if a mobile game
development course was created that it should focus on
Android and iOS.
We had noticed in the last section that both Android
and iOS device owners are in favor of developing in Andriod
platform, while only iOS device owners has shown significant
interest in that of iOS platform. There are two factors that we
think might be related to this result: familiarity with Java
platform, and Apple’s high standard of iOS applications. All
of the students we have surveyed has taken at least CSE
174. In that class, the students became familiar with Java
programming environment, which is Android's primary
development language. This strongly suggests the students
were expecting a more shallow learning curve in Android
development than iOS development. And since Apple has a
annual developer license fee, as well as a rigorous testing
and approval system, we feel the students might be
somewhat intimated by the cost and possible rejection of the
applications they may very well spend a long time to develop
in the future.
From the survey results we have gathered so far, it
suggests the students are interested in 2D, 3D, collision
detection, and to learn how to use Accelerometer and Gyro.
[Also, those topics are generally covered in syllabus of
similar courses offered by other universities.] As a result, we
have structures the alternatives to contain these topics.
[Prerequisite discussion. It seems from what we have
so far we will not be able to use CSE 251, 487, IMS 211, 212
as prerequsities as at least 50% hasn’t taken any of them. It
has a possibility to change after surveys from IMS gets to
us.]
Hello YeChen, Alan and Erich,
we really enjoy the progress you made with your study. We found the comments
that you included in the first part of the report really useful and we understand that
especially the second part of it is not complete yet. This is why our comments
cannot be too thorough. Apart from the details we pointed out throughout the
report, you may want to focus on spell-checking and some further editing of the
layout and figures. We are sure that after having all the necessary data collected and
some parts of the text reformulated, the report will make even better impression
that it already does now.
Alavi, Alper, Georgina, Jan and Michal