A Visualisation Course in a Game Development Curriculum

Abstract

Visualisation courses can often be found as part of a computer science curriculum. These basic or advanced level courses are often taught in terms of information visualisation, scientific visualisation or a combination of both. Other visualisation courses focus more on visual aesthetics. This paper presents and discusses a visualisation course curriculum which is aimed at students specifically studying computer science programmes with a focus on digital game development. Since computer games of today keep generating an increasing amount of data it is more important than ever to educate our game development students with the theory behind visualisation and key data visualisation techniques. In the design and evaluation of the visualisation in games curriculum, it was found that concepts within the area of visualisation are relevant to many areas of digital games. This paper describes the curriculum for a university course which might not be commonly found in traditional game development programmes. It particularly presents the course structure and the lessons learned which together with existing literature demonstrate important concepts to consider in the area of visualisation in games.