Data-Driven Design & Development (Spring 2024)
Official course description:
Course info
Programme
Staff
Course semester
Exam
Abstract
In this course, students learn how to work in data-driven design and development processes and what changes data analysis brings to the design and maintenance of games.
Description
Data analysis has become one of the driving forces of game design and development. This course teaches data analysis methods, and how they affect design and development. Students learn how user data is gathered, and how data analysis can be used in order to support the design and development of games and other interactive systems. They also learn how to develop, use, and analyse different game industry related metrics (e.g. customer metrics, community metrics, performance metrics, gameplay metrics) and how to use those to balance and optimise different aspects of games, informing the design process.
Formal prerequisites
The students need to have attended an introduction to programming course.Intended learning outcomes
After the course, the student should be able to:
- Formulate an appropriate research question to effectively address and evaluate a design, development or business idea.
- Design research studies and evaluate their results in relation to a given research question.
- Compare, evaluate and apply appropriate operationalisation of a given construct
- Outline and apply relevant statistical measures for testing, evaluation and communication of data.
- List possible data sources to evaluate the user experience in a given context
- Identify relevant key performance indicators and metrics relevant in each of the design and development stages.
- Identify and apply appropriate visualisations of collected data metrics that can inform the appropriate stakeholder.
- Describe the technical, ethical and legal challenges connected to the collection and analysis of user data.
Learning activities
Students are responsible for attending weekly lectures, participating in the group activities and engaging with the teaching staff for supervision and feedback.
Mandatory activities
There will be no mandatory activity during the course. The students will be provided with weekly workshop and they will work on a project throughout the course. A report on the project will be handed in at the end of the course as exam project. Alongside the oral examination, the report will contribute to the final grade.The student will receive the grade NA (not approved) at the ordinary exam, if the mandatory activities are not approved and the student will use an exam attempt.
Course literature
Game Research Methods - Petri Lankoski, Staffan Björk [https://press.etc.cmu.edu/index.php/product/game-research-methods/]
The remaining material will be provided for each lecture in the form of links and articles
Student Activity Budget
Estimated distribution of learning activities for the typical student- Preparation for lectures and exercises: 20%
- Lectures: 15%
- Exercises: 10%
- Assignments: 10%
- Project work, supervision included: 20%
- Exam with preparation: 25%
Ordinary exam
Exam type:D: Submission of written work with following oral, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
D2G: Submission for groups with following oral exam supplemented by the submission. Shared responsibility for the report.
During the course, the students work on a group project in which they practice how to make data-informed decisions about game design and development and how to evaluate the results of their decisions.
The objective of the project is to improve an existing game; the game can be one previously developed by students -- e.g. during the Making Games Course -- or an open- game (the students need access to the code to be able to work on the project).
Throughout the project, the students should use the knowledge acquired in the lectures to perform the following steps:
1. analyze the player/user experience,
2. identify an area of improvement,
3. formulate a hypothesis,
4. develop a prototype,
5. design an evaluation,
6. perform the evaluation,
7. report the results and submit the report.
The project submission is a report of a maximum of 16 pages (Springer LNCS format), including a description of all of the aforementioned steps, an analysis of the results and a discussion. References are excluded from the limit.
During the exam, each group presents their project, for around 5 minutes per group member (e.g. 10 minutes presentation for two-student groups). The group presentation is followed by approximately 15-minute individual sessions.
During these sessions, each student is evaluated individually on the project and the course program. The questions will both be practical and theoretical, on specific activities related to the project or on topics discussed during the lectures.
--------[ FOR STUDENTS FROM OUTSIDE THE MASTER IN GAMES ]-------
If you are a student from another program, you are welcome to attend the course. In your case, you have two options for the project: you can either work on a game together with other game students or form a group with other students from outside the games program and work on an application, website or some other form of digital artefact.
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Group
- The ideal group size is between 2 and 3 students. Groups with 4 students can be accepted in exceptional situations and will be evaluated case-by-case.
20 minutes
Mixed exam 2 : Joint student presentation followed by an individual dialogue. The group makes their presentations together and afterwards the students participate in the dialogue individually while the rest of the group is outside the room.
reexam
Exam type:D: Submission of written work with following oral, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
D22: Submission with following oral exam supplemented by the submission.
Time and date
Ordinary Exam - submission Tue, 21 May 2024, 08:00 - 14:00Ordinary Exam Mon, 10 June 2024, 09:00 - 21:00
Ordinary Exam Tue, 11 June 2024, 09:00 - 21:00
Ordinary Exam Wed, 12 June 2024, 09:00 - 21:00
Ordinary Exam Thu, 13 June 2024, 09:00 - 21:00
Reexam - submission Wed, 24 July 2024, 08:00 - 14:00
Reexam Mon, 12 Aug 2024, 09:00 - 21:00