CSE to Establish Computer Gaming Lab

The School of Computing and Software Engineering at SPSU has announced plans to establish a game design and development lab.  The lab, which will primarily be funded through the Academic Affairs Equipment Fund, will consist of about 14 game development stations for the XBox 360, as well as a number of Play Station 3 and WII game consoles.

The lab will be used for three purposes.  Establishing the Computer Gaming Lab will allow CSE to strengthen the gaming concentrations in its undergraduate programs in Information Technology and Software Engineering.  The School also hopes that it will be able to leverage the lab to design a new undergraduate degree in computer game design and development.

The lab will also be used to support teaching in CSE's introductory programming courses.  Introductory programming courses are notorious across the world for their relatively low success rates.  However, a number of schools have reported that incorporating game design and development exercises in such courses has dramatically reduced failure rates.  CSE hopes to emulate this experience.

CSE is also planning to make the Computer Gaming lab available to students for entertainment purposes during the periods that it is not in use to support CSE's educational and research programs.

The Computer Gaming lab will open in the Summer.