About the Class - Advanced Game Projects

Now commonly referred to as AGP at University of Southern California.¹

CSCI 529a/b Advanced Game Projects, CSCI 491L/491bL Final Game Project, and CTIN 491L/493L Advanced Game Project are a two-semester advanced game project class administered collaboratively by USC School of Cinematic Art and USC Viterbi School of Engineering. It is a year-long group project class featuring interdisciplinary and self-driven student teams with the results presented at USC Demo Day (Now USC Games Expo).

Instructors for the class were Laird Malamed, Michael Zyda, and Scott Easley.

Official Descriptions

CTIN 491L “Students work in teams on pre-production and prototyping of a functional digital game suitable for distribution via the web and/or submission into independent games festivals.”

CTIN 493L “Students work in teams to polish and finalize a functional digital game suitable for distribution via the web and/or submission into independent games festivals.”

CSCI 491aL “a: Design, iterative prototyping, and development of a 1st playable level.”

CSCI 491bL “b: Design, iterative stage 2 prototyping and development of a refined game.”

CSCI 529A “Team projects intended to address the multifaceted technical and creative challenges that are inherent to comprehensive game development.”

CSCI 529B “This course provides students in various areas of game specialization the practice of design, iterative stage 2 prototyping and development of a refined game.”

Course Syllabus

• 2012 Fall
• 2013 Spring
• 2013 Fall
• 2014 Spring ²

Impact of AGP

Students come to AGP for a variety of different goals, such as a portfolio piece to get a job, an art piece to express themselves, a commercial product to start a company, etc.

For the visitor of this page, you may be familiar with the following AGP outcomes during my time as a TA: Outer Wilds was one of the games that came out of Advanced Game Projects as a commerical game in 2019. I documented their initial pitch, fall semester recruitment, and midterm progress. Another outcome is the Leads at Wild Skies/Project Holodeck that went on to form Survios, a virtual reality game developer and publisher. ³

My Role at Advanced Game Projects

I was the Teaching Assistant, along with Balki and Josh. Joined by Brooke the second year. I was blessed with the opportunity to take on many responsibilities as well as new initiatives to improve the course. Some examples include:

• Being and recruiting art school liaison to foster collaboration between USC and nearby art schools, such as Laguna College of Art & Design, Gnomon, ArtCenter College of Design, OTIS College of Art and Design, etc.
• GamePipe Lab Manager that handles the equipment and recommending equipment and software purchases
• Event liaison between student teams and the tech team to coordinate and plan the event for the USC Demo Day, which happens at the end of Fall and Spring semester. For example, see USC Demo Day 2013
• Event planning and execution, such as welcome party/orientation/bbq for new computer science game students, game jam, AGP pitch and judging for next year’s AGP, etc.
• Recording midterm and final presentations for future reference ⁴
• Software Installation and Hardware Setup Maintenance⁵
• Advisor/mentor to student club for game development - MEGA (Makers of Entertaining Games Association) at the University of Southern California
• Updating syllabus, connecting mentors to teams, compiling lists of references and resources, and more… ⁶

About the Class - Free to Play Game Development

CSCI 499 Free to Play Game Development teaches students to develop games with free to play paradigm such as ones found on social networks.

Instructors for the class were Chris Swain, Scott Easley Anshul Dhawan (Alumni, covers the tech part, and as representative from Zynga).

Course Syllabus 2013 Spring

How I became the TA

I actually wasn’t officially the TA for this class. Being the AGP TA and trying to help the USC games program in general, I make sure the lab and classroom space is running well. When I heard that we may be getting a new class and new professor. I swung by the class to make sure the audiovisual is working and that the class can otherwise run smoothly. I stayed to listen to the lecture and see what the class was about. I enjoyed the lecture and very much respected professor Swain for all the work he puts in. I ended up returning to make sure AV is working and staying for the lecture. Rinse & repeated this a few times. It wasn’t until one time I went to get a sandwich after making sure audiovisual worked and that class has started to later get a message from professor Swain asking me where I was as he thought I was the assigned TA.⁷ I figured I might as well continue what I do pro bono and enjoy the fact I am basically auditing the class. That’s the story of how I inadvertently became a TA for another class.⁸

My Role at Free to Play Game Development

My role here is what you would typically expect from a TA - making sure the audiovisual is working, answering students questions, helping them with coding questions, and in general trying to make sure the class runs smoothly.

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