Construction trial of a practical education curriculum for game development byindustry/university collaboration
Koji Mikami†, Taichi Watanabe†, Katsunori Yamaji‡, Kenji Ozawa‡, Akinori Ito†,
Motonobu Kawashima‡, Ryota Takeuchi†, Kunio Kondo† and Mitsuru Kaneko††Tokyo University of Technology‡ Premium Agency, Inc. / Tokyo University of Technology
1. Outline and BackgroundAlso, game development only becomes possible when these skills

In recent years, a deep understanding of game development

are combined. Hence, it is hard to complete lecture courses andprocedures has been needed in order to keep up with advancements inworkshops within one semester as moving from game proposal togame technology. At the same time, game education is on the risegame development will require more time.

among American and European Universities[1][2][3][4][5]. Also, a

Furthermore, for practical training curriculum, there is a need tocurriculum framework has been created by the International Game

cooperate with veterans in the industry and have them their

Developers Association (IDGA) with positive progress shown by

experience from the actual working environment.

cooperating with the industry[6].
Games, together with manga and anime as represented by Japanese

3. Review of Current Situation of TUT

technological advances are highly evaluated in other countries. As

At TUT, we led other universities in Japan by opening the School

there has been no consistent education program designed specificallyof "Media Science" (capacity: 400 students) in 1999. The schoolfor game production in the Japanese higher education institutions, theeffectively prepared curriculums combining lectures and exercises

recent development of a game oriented curriculum has been strongly

that were adopted as the “Organization and practice of media-related

welcomed by the game industry. However, when the project was

exercise class” project by the 2005 Support Program for Distinctive

initiated there was no such curriculum for a 4-year Bachelor’s

University Education of the Japanese Ministry of Education Culture,

program. As a result, organization of teaching and production

Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

methods was delayed and the industry developed their own uniqueproduction style. Due to this, production methods became a trade

4. Program Details

secret and complicated the relationship between universities andBased on the curriculums in use at the School of Media Science,industry. Hence, there are only lectures conducted by part-time

we have attempted to build a curriculum aimed at cultivatingteaching staff hired by several colleges.

international human resources in support of a comprehensive gameAt the Tokyo University of Technology (TUT), we have designed acurriculum in collaboration with Premium Agency, Inc that aims todevelopment program in accordance with the needs of the Japanesegame industry.

offer training in the practical aptitudes that are demanded by the game

Hitherto, the technologies required for game production have beendevelopment industry. We have added lessons to the traditional

scattered over a wide range of fields. However, as TUT has experts infaculty curriculum that combine lectures and exercises in a gamereal-time CG technology and animation technology, we have beendevelopment context. As a result, the number of students that areable to offer tuition that covers a wide range of disciplines. On theacquiring knowledge by consistently attending lectures and thus

other hand, since the most capable human resources tend to be spreadgaining experience in a wide range of concentrations such as

over so many different industries it has been difficult to provide a

programming, CG and planning from the 1st to the 4th Year is

consistent education program, even when a small number of teachers

growing.

from outside of the university were invited to provide support. Yamaji
as an owner of a game development company coordinated human

2. Problem Statement/Dilemma

resources from within the industry based on international experienceIn game development, skills such as creating proposals, script,

in game development. It therefore became possible to create adesign, program, graphics, sound and much more would be necessary.

curriculum for an integrated educational system in the fundamental

Due to this, a number of teaching staffs are needed. It is difficult togamecreate, using limited resources, an educational system that supports acollaboration.

wide-range of skills.

Copyright is held by the author / owner(s).
SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, Yokohama, Japan, December 16–19, 2009.
ISBN 978-1-60558-858-2/09/0012

production

technologies

based

on

industry/university

4.1. Curriculum

principally by exercises. Fig. 2 shows an example of the configuration

Fig. 1 shows the system of exercise subjects that are available atof the game curriculum.

TUT. These subjects include “basic exercises” that are compulsory to

As an education program designed specifically for practical gamethe 2nd Year students, the “core exercise” for the 3rd Year students

production, this curriculum was applied to and adopted by theand the “project exercise” given to students from the 1st to 3rd years

university reform promotion subsidy (university reform promotion

as special exercises offered from an early stage. With each subject

project) entitled “Support for Good Practice for modern education

accepting the setting of a sub discipline, a framework for prompt

needs”.

response to student needs is established.

This approach enables

students to either challenge the same theme from the 1st to the 4thYear or to learn different technologies according to their learning

Entrance
1st year:Sem.1

stages. Game education also includes two special course lectures in
addition to the exercise curriculum described above. Concurrent
Sem. 2learning via lectures and exercises allows the students to learn thesubject both through theory and practice.
2nd year
1st yearFresher tutorials
Computeroperation
exercise

2nd yearMedia basic
exercise:
4 themes(compulsory),
6 weeks/theme

3rd yearMedia core
exercise:
2 themes(optional),
13
weeks/theme

Sem. 1

4th year

Graduation
research

Sem. 2

Project exercise
Fig. 1 Exercise System at TUT School of Media Science
Graduation research (thesis) is required of 4th Year students, who

3rd yearadopt specializations in their studies. As TUT includes graduate
programs for bionics, computer science and media science, thepostgraduate students can also go on to continue their studies tomaster and doctoral courses. In this way, TUT has adopted gameproduction as one of the projects based on the framework of the
School of Media Science.

4th yearGame creator
Game producer
Project workshop I(Understanding the algorithm of Analog
play)


Project workshop II(Devising an original plan)
Basics of game producing(Lecture)
Project workshop III(Learning the game material production
technique)Game producing techniques(Lecture)
Project workshop IV
Project workshop(Leaning advanced
IV (Management)
production
techniques)Core workshop: "Game producing"
Project workshop V, Project workshop V,
VI (Experimenting
VI (Experimental
production
management)
techniques) Presentation at Tokyo Game Show 
Graduation research “Game science”
Job finding/ Starting businesses

In the first semester of Year 1, students will not learn how to use
digital tools used in game development. Prototyping methods are
effective in designing games[7], but creating a prototype is time
consuming. The aim of this workshop is to educate students in gamemechanisms. Students add and change rules of physical(traditional)
games such as "hide and seek" and are required to make apresentation to all other students. The modified games are then

Graduate school (R&D course)
Fig. 2 Game Education Curriculum

4.2. Education Resources
In order to implement an educational contents system that is not
limited to producing games, it is essential that the educational

test-played, the rules further revised, and a final presentation is made.

institution possesses the facilities and organization capable ofThis workshop lasts approximately 12 hours spread over the span of 4

promoting the production and accumulation of expertise. Therefore,weeks. The workshop is suitable for the first year students because it
demands a lot of communication.
In the 2nd Year, students will choose a concentration based on theirinterests. Game production requires two different types of human

at TUT we have established the "Creative Lab (C_LAB)" in the
Katayanagi Advanced Research Lab as a foundation for studying
contents production techniques. The foundation is attached to theuniversity and the laboratory is conducted under the guidance ofresource, those that are oriented to creative matters (game creators)

Kaneko and the authors of this paper. By inviting outside advice

and those with commercial interests (game producers). Ourfrom persons with relevant experience and knowledge, the Creative

curriculum intends to cultivate practical human resources by

Lab has gathered young researchers and production staff to begin theproviding an education from both perspectives and then linking themstudy of contents production technology. It has thus built an effective

system for providing practical education throughout the process.

5.1. Graduation Research

One of the special features of the educational activity provided by

Selection: The graduate research project sets a quota the permitted

the lab as a research organization is the practical education offered bynumber of students. Students apply for their desired projects, and if

participation in industry/university/government collaborated projects.

the number of applicants exceeds the set project limit, the project

The permanent presence at the University of full time young

tutors are permitted to select which students to accept. In fact, theresearchers that are able to utilize advanced facilities and technologies

number of applicants to the Game Science Projects have beenrequiring high skills has made it possible to keep such facilities

exceeding the program’s capacity greatly since its establishment inworking continuously. This strategy allows them to be available

2006 and student selection is performed every year. The selection

anytime for educational purposes and research whenever they areevaluates the projects and work that each student has achieved rather

required. Collaboration with private enterprise companies alsothan the GPA (grade point average) score, etc. Table 2 displays past

becomes easy. When a student participates in a project in which he orstudent application data. Table 3 shows the share of applicant fields

she is interested in, such a student can join as an assistant to theand that of the selected fields.

researchers at the same time as actually participating in a project.

The trend shows that the selection share of the students majoring in

TUT makes full use of its highly developed environment and humanplanning (scenarios) is the least. This is because there were many

resources and is capable of providing students with an education close

students who were not proficient in another field and thus had toto the practical work by letting them work in OJT and internships.

select the planning (scenarios) field by default. On the other hand,

The staff giving the game-related exercises and lectures that are

many of the students applying for the programming projects had

discussed in the present paper include full-time and part-time teachers

some understanding of games and other basic knowledge so theas well as researchers from the Creative Lab. The details of theprobability of selection with them was high.

teaching staff are as shown in Table 1.

In the project exercises that are positioned as leading to graduate
research, many of the students interested in game production are

Table 1 Teaching Staff List
* Underscored names indicate Course Tutors and the names in italic
indicate the C_LAB staff.
Role

Teaching staff

Director

Mitsuru Kaneko

Graduate

Taichi Watanabe, Koji Mikami, Katsunori Yamaji,

research

Kenji Ozawa

Core
exercises
Project
exercises

tending to accept the importance of acquiring programming skills.
Such a high awareness of programming from the entrance stage toactual game production is not found in other projects. This is clearly
different from the recent trend where students avoid engineeringcourses.
Table 2 Selection Data

Koji Mikami, Mitsuru Kaneko, Tagiru Nakamura,

2006

16

59

Selected
students
24

Kenji Ozawa

2007

16

39

19

Koji Mikami, Taichi Watanabe (Producing) , Akinori

2008

20

43

21

Capacity

ApplicantsIto (Sound), Motonobu Kawashima (Graphics),
Tagiru Nakamura , Ryota Takeuchi (Programming)

Table 3 Field Trend Data

LectureKatsunori Yamaji (Basic of game producing, gameField

subjects

producing techniques)SpecialSony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Game

lecturers

Republic, EnterBrain, Tohmatsu Consulting, etc.

Applicant share

Selection share

Planning (Scenario)

40％

10％

Programming

30％

50％

Graphics

25％

30％

Sound

5％

10％

5. Research Projects
The projects that are considered in this paper include “GameResearch topics: In the Game Science Project, the students

Science” research projects within the framework of graduate researchpersonally conduct data collection and propose their own researchand industry/university collaborative projects joined by the C_LAB,

themes. The teacher judges whether or not the proposed theme isetc.

feasible and approves it for graduation research if it is considered tobe so. Basic CG research is the foremost theme for the present but
there are also other popular themes such graphic representation
techniques, usability studies, 3D audio and scenario analyses. Someof the theses written in the past are listed below.

• Application of “boundary blur” to CG.
• Elastic body deformation accompanied by phase shifts• Energy wave representation with volume rendering.
• Rendering technique to add American comic atmosphere.
• Crowd simulations in the context of the behavior of sardines
Activities outside the university: The games produced as a result ofgraduation research and project exercises were exhibited at Tokyo
Game Show 2007 and 2008 as shown in Fig. 3, 4, 5 and 6. The Tokyo
Game Show is participated mainly by vocational colleges andexhibitions related to academic research are relatively few.
Nevertheless, featuring research goals and game production issues at
an international event of the industry has made it possible to maintainmotivation for research and game production that often takes a longtime as well as obtaining feedback regarding the research from those
who are actually within the game industry.

Fig. 6 Sample of Exhibited Game at Tokyo Game Show 2008

5.2. Industry/university collaboration in research
The Creative Lab plays the central role in advancing a large
number of research projects in collaboration with Premium Agency,
Inc. Among them, research projects related to game production are
introduced below.
Research related to motion generation technology using
MOCAP : A motion generation experiment using the motion
capturing system owned by TUT is underway. It includes the study ofadvanced capturing techniques as well as the study and practice ofpractical capturing techniques assuming that their application istargeted on actual contents. This research involves researchers and alarge number of students from the School of Media Science. Figs. 7
and 8 show examples of work handled in this experiment.

Fig. 3 Exhibition at Tokyo Game Show 2007

Fig. 7 Example of a Detailed Facial Expression Capturing Study

Fig. 4 Sample of Exhibited Poster at Tokyo Game Show 2008

Fig. 8 Example of Animal Motion Capturing Study
R&D for remote training materials: A variety of dedicatedsoftware is used in the production of contents including games. As
Fig. 5 Sample of Exhibited Game at Tokyo Game Show 2008

many of the software programs incorporate various functions, theiroperations also tend to be complicated. As a result, learning aboutsoftware issues is an important part of contents production education.

6.2. Evaluation for the workshop

In this research, teaching materials as shown in Fig. 9 are researched＂Project Workshop": The project based workshop that students

and developed in order to teach students both about the technology

applied from 1st Year to 3rd Year has achieved its goal. Students withnecessary for more practical content production and the acquisition ofdifferent skills such as producing, programming, graphics and sound,software operation skills.

integrated their skills to complete a final project. Within thisenvironment, the students were able to learn the skills that they reallywanted to and how to apply them. And, the fact that they have learned
many aspects of game development can be evaluated. Also, an
environment where students were able to guide each other was
established by conducting workshops for 1st to 3rd Year students inthe same class.
On the other hand, practicum from early stage has a demerit where

Fig. 9 Example of training Material Contents

student with undecided objective will find it difficult to participate.
Also, students have hard time choosing things that they want toGame development process management system study: The

specialize in during early stages. Hence, it was noted that there is acontents production uses a large number of specialized processes

need to coordinate in the case where student wants to specialize in

before completion of the product. These processes vary widelydifferent field than what they wanted earlier on.

depending on the form and genre of the contents. Technology for"Core Workshop": In the case of "Core Workshop" classes the

managing the production processes is as important as is theapplicants almost always numbered more than the limits set for the

production technology. In the context of game development, otherclasses. But, because the practicum curriculum was intended for one

factors such as program debugging are involved additionally. Thissemester, there had been problem with the schedule and many

research consists of a study of process management systems as shown

limitations in their creation. Therefore, in comparison with the projectin Fig. 10.

workshop evaluation, the class evaluation questionnaire feedback
from students scored lower. Also, the completed creation had a lot oflimitation in production.

6.3. Evaluation for effectiveness of education
Although the effect of the new curriculum on job finding is hard todetermine from a single survey, It is encouraging that six of the 15
students who have graduated from the “Game Science” research
project and have applied for jobs in the game industry have actually
Fig. 10 Screen shot of the Process Management Software “B-TRAQ”

found jobs there (including in associated industries).

6. Evaluation

7. Conclusion

The present attempt was started in 2004 and the curriculum was

In Japan, industry/university collaboration in the field of games hascompleted in the academic year 2008. The "pre-posttest" method[8] isjust begun. As mentioned earlier, when the project was initiated there

capable of, to a certain degree, measuring the effectiveness of an

was no curriculum for a 4-year Bachelor’s program in gameeducative curriculum. However, as we cannot restrict students fromdevelopment within Japan. However, there have been a growing

studying a number of different subjects during these 3 years, it isnumber of ICT faculties that are setting up Game Course in theirdifficult to evaluate our curriculum using this method. Therefore,

universities. Furthermore, efforts are being made to set up an

statistical evaluation is limited to some part of lectures andeducational environment, such as IDGA Japan’s effort to translate

workshops.

IDGA’s curriculum framework [9].
In TUT, students are actively engaged in collaboration. 80 students

6.1. Evaluation for the lecture

are confidently participating in project exercises that are provided as

A “class evaluation questionnaire” designed to evaluate classoptional classes. These students are acquiring skills independently

performances showed that the game related classes were rated highlyfrom the early stages. Collaboration can be regarded as effective inby students. These classes were attended by 400 students,

cultivating human resources. However, there are issues that remaincorresponding to more than 80% of the students in the same grade.

with respect to practical technology development.

7.1 Issues

Acknowledgement

Gap between the research periods of students and the expected

Our game education program was sponsored by Japanese Ministry

results: The substantial period of research in the undergraduate schoolof Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan.

is less than a year considering other student activities including job(Gendai GP)

finding, and it is not easy to enhance the research capability andachieve significant research results in such a short time. Moreover,

References:some of the technologies required at the practical development site

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RENKEI NIYORU KOTO KYOIKU KIKAN NI OKERU

different types of motion easily in programs and the “object profiler”

GEEMU JINZAI NO IKUSEI TO SENTAN KENKYU (Fosteringthat manages the motion history of 3D objects for use in bug analyses.

of Game Human Resources and Advanced Research at Higher

When an integrated support environment can be created by merging

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Collaboration),” CEDEC2007 Regular Session.

that allows students to efficiently experience actual productions.

Institutions

Based

on

Industry-University[12] Kaneko, M., Mikami, K and Yamaji, K. : “SENMON KYOIKU
NI

OKERU

SANGAKU

RENKEI(Industry-University

Collaboration in Professional Education),” Education Reform IT
Forum, Section Meeting B-2, 2007.

Fig. 11 Originally Developed “Motion Generation Tool”