Friday
April 14th @ 2:30 3rd Floor Classroom
Computer Science Department
1890 Maple Avenue
Bernie Yee is currently Director of Programming
at Sony Online Entertainment, publishers of EverQuest and the upcoming MMP
strategy game, Sovereign. His past
management endeavors include work as Director of Creative Development at
Disney Online/ABC Online, and Director of Product Development at ABC
Interactive, which developed and published 1997's PC Football Game of the
year, Monday Night Football '98. Doug Church, most recently with Looking Glass
Studios, has been making games for about 10 years. He has been project
leader, programmer, and designer on many titles. PC Gamers' recent list of
the top 50 PC games of all time included four of his games, three of them
in the top twenty: Ultima Underworld (I & II), System Shock, and Thief:
the Dark Project. The talk
will be followed by an informal Q&A session/reception, with food and
beverages to be served Ever wonder what it's
like to work on video games? Ever
dream of doing it? Join us Friday
for a frank discussion of the computer game industry. Bernie Yee of Sony
Online and Doug Church of Looking Glass Studios will touch on some of the
major issues that game designers and developers face, now and in the
future. In particular, this talk
will focus on what's involved in taking an academic approach to deal with
real development problems. How can
research and work in academia be helpful in the "real world"
development process? How do the business realities of working in the
industry affect this process, and how can academia "tune itself"
into the realities of the industry, prepare students and define new
research problems? 
Academia and
the Realities of Game Development
