{"id":150,"date":"2018-12-14T23:11:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T23:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caleb-perkins.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2019-05-01T20:12:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T20:12:50","slug":"semester-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serket.dev\/index.php\/2018\/12\/14\/semester-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Semester Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Featured image depicts Texas A&M Game Developers Halloween social – an event I directed!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Assuming all goes well, the fall semester of 2018 will have been my second-to-last semester. It’s been a hard-fought journey wrought with more technical strain than I have ever encountered, and for this reason I lovingly titled it my “boss battle” semester. Allow me if you will, a brief retrospective of where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. This will serve as a prelude to what I hope will be greater activity on this blog and this website.<\/p>\n

Information Storage & Retrieval<\/h2>\n

When I signed up for this class to fulfill a degree plan requirement, I never would have expected that it would become one of my all time favorite computer science courses, second perhaps only to Computer Graphics.\u00a0 Information storage is the true power of computer science — the driving force behind Google itself — and the technology that allows us to give people what they want.\u00a0 Roughly the first half of the semester was spent studying search algorithms and frameworks like TF-IDF (term frequency – inverse document frequency) and PageRank.\u00a0 These tools are used to break down documents into easily search-able tokens which we can use to later quickly find what we’re looking for, ranked in terms of relevance.<\/p>\n

The second half of the semester focused on recommenders, like the kind of technology behind Netflix.\u00a0 When given a set of data, we can represent each point mathematically and then find other similar data points.\u00a0 For example, given a database of movie reviews, we can predict the rating a user would give other movies in that database.\u00a0 This allows us to recommend movies to that user we think they would enjoy.<\/p>\n

Information storage has applications in software development, particularly with big data applications, but I find it particularly useful in analyzing player activity in game analytics.\u00a0 One of the most powerful uses I’ve seen of clustering algorithms has been in a study about player telemetry in World of Warcraft:<\/p>\n

A Comparison of Methods for Player Clustering via Behavioral Telemetry<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I will admit I got sidetracked and explored a variety of related papers while searching for this one.\u00a0 I am fairly certain it is the same one I read years ago, but your results may vary if you search for similar papers.)<\/p>\n

Communication & Video Games<\/h2>\n

As one of my “emphasis area” courses, this class was to be taken outside of my major, and I selected an elective from my minor without much understanding of the class itself.\u00a0 After all, “communication and video games” is a rather vague area with many different directions it could be taken.\u00a0 What followed was perhaps the most comprehensive history of video games from a variety of angles I have ever undertaken.\u00a0 Over the course of the semester, four books were read:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Donovan, T., & Garriott, R. (2010). Replay: The history of video games<\/em>. East Sussex, England: Yellow Ant.<\/li>\n
  2. Isbister, K. (2016). How games move us: Emotion by design<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<\/li>\n
  3. Nichols, R. (2014). The video game business<\/em>. New York: Palgrave MacMillan<\/li>\n
  4. Consalvo, M. (2016). Atari to Zelda: Japan’s Videogames in Global Contexts<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Out of all of the books, I consider the first one, Replay<\/em>, to be the most comprehensive and worth reading.\u00a0 It provides an extended look at the technological history of video games from the beginnings of computing itself and Spacewar!<\/em> at MIT all the way to the end of 2009.\u00a0 Donovan speaks at great length over the major events in gaming history like the coin-op era, the rise and fall of Atari, and introductions of 3D graphics.<\/p>\n

    Isbister’s book was a short but excellent read, covering the basics of emotional game design and how game designers try to use the advantages of interactive mediums to influence audiences.\u00a0 Perhaps the most out-of-touch was Nichols’ book on the business of video games, which seemed to have been based on academic studies done years before the release date.\u00a0 While it is definitely focused more on the business aspect of games, I found it was interesting to see another take on the industry.<\/p>\n

    Finally, Consalvo had the most “specific” text, where she wrote about the rise of the Japanese gaming community and how it affects western markets.\u00a0 One of the more interesting chapters focuses on how difficult localization is between the east and the west.\u00a0 Most often this is not because of raw language barriers, but due to cultural differences.\u00a0 An assumption that might be commonplace in Asia could be foreign to US players.\u00a0 Preferences also change across the global divide as well, as Consalvo relates the differences in animation style.<\/p>\n

    Overall, the class provided me with a broad understanding of the history of gaming and gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at the legacy we are left with as game developers.<\/p>\n

    Capstone<\/h2>\n

    Last but certainly not least, the main focus of my academic endeavors this semester was my capstone course.\u00a0 For those unfamiliar, capstone courses here at Texas A&M take the form of a semester-long group-based project.\u00a0 For my capstone, I managed to convince several other people to create an educational VR video game designed to teach basic programming concepts to people haven’t been exposed to them before.\u00a0 Rather than simply tell you about it, here is the video demo:<\/p>\n