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XNA Pt. II
May 6, 2008
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The gaming industry is a highly competitive, multi-billion dollar growth sector and Singapore has plans to invest S$500 million dollars in games research and development over the next five years.
This week, in the final part of an On Campus gaming feature, I learn more about Singapore Polytechnic’s new elective in Console Game Development and find out more about how this course will go a long way in ensuring that our country’s gaming climate remains viable and competitive!
All this and more, only on Radio Singapore International!
I’m Michael Tan.
10 years ago, Singapore’s gaming industry was just starting out and there were no opportunities for students to under-take courses dedicated to game development. A deacde later, what can we anticipate for this rapidly-developing industry? Mr Alvin Tang, a Lecturer from the School of Media and Info-Comm Technology at Singapore Polytechnic sheds some light on the growth of this sector in Singapore.
AT: 10 years later, I think that globally actually, there’s a boom in game development as an educational sector. After all, you know, when the dust settles down, there’ll be a group of good schools that provides good graduates, you know, if you take in 20 students as your in-take, you should turn out 20 good graduates who are employable as programmers by the game companies. So 10 years later, these four or five top schools in Singapore should be consistently putting out good graduates that are employable by the industry.
In regard to games that people will want to play right, what do you think will sit well with gamers?
AT: Personally, I wouldn’t pin it down to one type of game. I would say social games, games that have a multi-player or co-play functionality in it, be it an RTS, a real-time strategy game or first-person shooter, they should allow the players to play with their friends. There’s always this stereo-type that people who play games are very anti-social which is not the case now. If you ask any student here plays games, they play games to get connected to their friends, it’s no longer going to the movies. They go to a place and they settle in and they play games with a group of friends, so the short answer is, games which have a multi-player or co-player functionality in it.
Do you see more guys in your classes than girls?
AT: The past two in-takes, we had two girls out of twenty guys.
But then again, there’re now a lot of girl gamers coming up, you know…
AT: Right, definitely, you know, if I were in a game company, I would like to hire a girl, not because of gender preference…
Haha…
AT: But to get that different perspective and to tap into this un-tapped market yet, where you have a lot of girls who want to play games, but if you have games where people chop people’s heads off, that type of game is not going to appeal to a girl gamer. They might want to play something else where they can co-operate with friends to set up shop maybe, to manage a village or something. What we’ve observed is that the games that they play are quite different.
And Singapore Polytechnic’s Console Game Development elective teaches students how to create a variety of games. Scott Lim is a current third-year course student and he tells me what he thinks is the most fun and most difficult component of this field of study.
SL: Okay, the most fun is actually the practical sections, where you get hands-on, to play and to create the games with the Xbox tools and the XNA tools and port it on the Xbox and you know that your game is able to be played on the console itself. The most difficult part will be actually understanding and creating the game itself because there’s quite a few technical skills that you need to know.
So what kind of game are you currently developing for your class?
SL: For me, I’m actually participating in a competition, so we’re creating a game on the theme of the environment, how to, you know, use technology to make the environment friendlier. It’s a third-person shooter game actually.
Okay, so you first started of course as a player yourself and now you are on the other end of the spectrum, you’re now a developer. What is the difference between both perspectives, or is there a difference at all, or does it complement each other?
SL: Well, actually it complements each other. You play and you want to find out how to do these special effects and you discover it when you develop it so it’s actually a plus-point for both actually, making the things more interesting.
So how do you think your experience with the Console Game Development elective right now at Singapore Polytechnic is going to help you to advance your career in the future, perhaps if you’d like to?
SL: Most probably entering the industry of creating games and most probably working for a company.
You’ve been listening to On Campus! Click on “Pod-Cast” at www.rsi.sg/english to down-load an audio file of this programme.
For Radio Singapore International, I’m Michael Tan.
Have a great week ahead!
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