Rob Dieterich, Skyboy Games This presentation was given at the 2017 Serious Play Conference, hosted by the George Mason University - Virginia Serious Play Institute. This presenter will outline a typical developer-publisher relationship in the entertainment games industry including a typical milestone schedule. He then describes how this relationship was applied to successfully teach game development and project management skills to high-school students in a two-week intensive summer class. In a partnership between Mason Game & Technology Academy (MGTA) and Envision Experience, the presenter and several others taught hands-on 3D game development skills to high-school students during the summer of 2016. By adopting a model that emulates the relationship between publishers and developers in the entertainment games industry, the teachers were able to maintain a high level of student engagement while mentoring them in the skills they need to develop their own computer games. Acting in the role of publishers, the teachers had their students divide into small teams that were responsible for conceiving, pitching, and developing projects of their own design. Through a series of milestone checks modeled on a typical publisher-developer relationship in the entertainment games industry, the teachers were able to guide the students' efforts to maximize their ability to finish their projects within the allotted time. The aspirational quality of the game developer role-play inherent in the relationship between the publishers (teachers) and the developers (students) helped keep the students motivated during class. Because the students conceived the projects themselves, they were further motivated to complete them and most groups self-managed effectively as a result. This self-management freed the teachers to concentrate on helping the student groups with the particular game development needs of their projects. This talk presents this developer-publisher model as a method to organize a project-based game development curriculum and describes the effectiveness of its application in the MGTA/Envision summer program.

1. Student-Developers
and Teacher-
Publishers
A MODEL FOR PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
PRESENTED BY ROB DIETERICH
SKYBOY GAMES LLC

2. Presentation Overview
• What is this talk about?
• Who is this guy?
• Why teach game development?
• The Entertainment Games Industry in a Nutshell
• The Student-Developer andTeacher-Publisher Model
• ClosingThoughts

3. What is this talk about?

4. What is this talk about?
• Teaching students game development skills in a project-based
manner that emulates development processes in the entertainment
games industry
• Takeaways
• A high-level understanding of the typical publisher-developer relationship in the
entertainment games industry
• A model for emulating this relationship in a project-based learning environment

5. Who is this guy?

6. Who is this guy?
• Robert Ota Dieterich
• Education
• William & Mary – BS in CS
• George Mason University – MA in Game Design
• Experience
• JET Program, Assistant LanguageTeacher
• Computer Sciences Corporation, Programmer
• iNiS Corporation, Programmer -> Programming Lead/Mgr.
• ILCA APPS, Freelance Programming
• George Mason University, Assistant Professor of Game Design

7. Gameography - Handheld

8. Gameography - Console

9. Gameography - Mobile

10. Gameography - Indie

11. Why teach game development?

12. It’s Applied STEM
• Not just STEM, it’s STEAM!

13. It’s Aspirational
• FamousGame Developers are like Nerdy Rockstars

14. It’s a Team Effort
• Multiple Roles and Skillsets Required
• Art, Programming, Music, Design

15. The Entertainment Games
Industry in a Nutshell

16. The Games Industry in a Nutshell
• “Triple-A” (AAA), Mid-Tier, Indie
• Publishers, Developers, and Platform-holders
• Pitch, Greenlight, Prototype, Production,Alpha, Beta

17. “Triple-A” (AAA)
• Tentpole Releases
• Big Development Budgets
• Bigger Marketing Budgets
• Staff of 100+
• Lots of Specialization
• Lots of Sequels

18. Indie
• SmallTeams (~10 or less)
• Smaller Budgets (~$100K
or less)
• Auteur Spirit
• More Experimentation
• More Starving Artists

19. Mid-Tier
• Too Small to Be AAA
• Too Much Overhead to be
Indie
• A Dying Breed?
• Some Survive byWorking
on Parts of Larger Projects

20. Publishers, Developers, and Platform
Holders
• Publishers market and distribute the product
• Developers create and produce the product
• Platform Holders provide a place to sell and play the product

21. Publishers, Developers, and Platform
Holders
Third-Party
Developer
Publisher
Platform
In-House
Publisher
Developer
Platform
Indie
Developer
Platform

22. Pitch, Greenlight, Prototype, Production,
Alpha, Beta
• Common Development Phases
Pre-Production
Pitch
Greenlight
Prototype
Production
Develop
Develop
Develop
Pre-Release
Alpha
Beta
Release

23. Pitch, Greenlight, Prototype, Production,
Alpha, Beta
• In Developer-Publisher relationships
• Often used as contractual milestones
• Funding (and developer survival) often hinges on
milestone completion
• Funding is often in the form of advanced royalties
• Contract milestones allow publishers and developers to
manage each other
• Usually, it’s the publisher managing the developer
Third-Party
Developer
Publisher
Platform

24. The Student-Developer and
Teacher-Publisher Model

25. The Student-Developer and Teacher-
Publisher Model
• Role-playing scenario where student teams take the role of
developers and teachers take the role of publishers in a third-party
development context
• Implemented in multiple 2-week Summer camp courses on 3D game
development
• 25-30 High-school Students
• Teaching team of 1 Lead and 2-3 Assistants

26. Basic Structure
• Students divide into teams of 2-3 on the first day and pitch project
ideas
• Student teams check in with the teachers at established milestone
dates
• Skills taught by the teachers to the various teams are based on the
needs of the teams’ projects
• Topics that apply to multiple teams are taught at the head of the
class while team-specific topics are taught one-on-one with the team

27. Milestones
Milestone Date
Greenlight Monday Afternoon
First Playable Thursday Morning
First Playable Presentation Friday Afternoon
Alpha Tuesday Afternoon
Beta Thursday Morning
Final Presentation Friday Afternoon

28. Milestone Meetings
• Meetings are held between each team and a pair of teachers (usually
the lead and an assistant)
• Other teaching assistants are roaming the class or running tutorials at that time
• Teams are encouraged to package a build for these meetings
• This helps presentation days run more smoothly since the student teams will be
used to packaging builds of their games
• Meetings serve as an opportunity for teachers to course correct
teams and set task priorities

29. Milestone Meetings
• Greenlight meeting is where each team pitches their idea to the
“publisher” (the teaching team)
• Students are expected to prep a one-sheet game idea document
• For Presentations, each team takes a build up to the front and shows
it to the class
• First-playable, Alpha, and Beta are checkpoints where each team
shows a current build to the teaching team so they can discuss their
progress and any problem areas

30. Closing Thoughts

31. Closing Thoughts
• Students quickly took ownership of their ideas and responsibility for
their implementation
• Student teams became largely self-managing when working on their
own ideas
• Few limits were placed on pitched ideas
• Scope control was executed through the milestone meetings
• Deadline pressures kept students on task
• There were some procrastinators, of course

32. Closing Thoughts
• Teaching relied heavily on the creativity and game development skills
of the teaching team
• The bulk of the teaching assistants were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year GMU Computer
Game Design majors
• Helping students was very hands-on
• Some teams, naturally, required more help than others
• Students helping other students became a valuable resource

33. Thank you for your time!
ANY QUESTIONS?