Designing memorable Experiences:Multimedia, Gamification and Serious Games Development

Programming Serious Games with the Android Platform

Multimedia is a transversal and strategic field that agglutinates all kinds of disciplines while being fully applicable to different final sectors. Real innovation emerges from the mixing of knowledge and different perspectives, thanks to the new contents and effective solutions. Multimedia, as defined by Tsuhan Chen (formerly editor of the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia journal), is “…the combination of different elements (whether medium, modality, technology, algorithm, or application) that provides a fuller experience of the effect of that combination”. It clearly allows us to obtain highly multidisciplinary interactive virtual worlds which enable us to address any initiative. For that reason it is necessary to understand the functioning of the new organizational environments while learning to elaborate and apply methodologies that integrate Creation, Design and Engineering in any process.

Games are very good examples of multidisciplinary productions, like any interactive experience able to keep the user immersed “in another reality”. In fact, video games can be considered as a particular case of collaborative virtual environments and these are made of different disciplines (graphic design, usability and user centered design, script and narrative, content generation, technology and content management, etc.).

Anything can be created from this set of principles. Let’s put some effort on showing how to achieve it!

Keywords: Interactive Learning, Edutainment, Gamification, Serious Games, Game Design, Advergaming, InGame Advertisement, Digital Production, Virtual Entities, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Multimedia, Videogames, Agile Management, Learning by Doing.

Program overview

Market study.
Understanding the roles inside a Multimedia team.
Agile Management 101.
Art, Design and Creativity.
Serious Games and Gamification Campaigns.
Tech details and platforms.
Implementation of a real project.

Course leader

Mr Oscar García Pañella

Target group

A very broad input profile to ensure diverse and interdisciplinary teams. The “magical triad” of profiles is more than welcome. This is Designers, Programmers and Producers to work together inside the real development that we will make happen in just 3 weeks. “Left and Right” brains to co-develop an innovative Serious Game to cover a real need. Rational and intuitive ways of thinking that if merged correctly will deliver pure innovation.

Therefore we need people to think about the story, to design the aesthetics criteria to be applied, to test the ruleset and game mechanics and finally to implement it all as a software package.

At least 50% of the students enrolling should have a technical profile. The Android SDK will be supported although the technical students are more than welcome to use other tools as long as they bring along the necessary software and licenses (e.g. Unity or Flash).

Course aim

Become a digital manager/designer/developer for the Multimedia field to be applied within any scope (sport, culture, education, medicine, marketing, entertainment…).
Experience “reality”.
Create first, perform afterwards.
Design by “thinking different” according to several Game Design principles to overcome “well-known” or new challenges differently.
Get to know Creative Techniques for your developments to be highly innovative.
Apply the “magical triad” of roles: Designer + Programmer + Producer inside your development team.
Use Agile Management to plan as you do.
Develop Android, Unity, Flash or other API’s applications for the current market while understanding their ins and outs.
Deploy your app, and the provisioning process, to a real device.

Work in an innovative, flexible, modular and very cretive space as La Salle’s Media Dome.

Interactive Learning equals a sense-pleasure, an unfolding story that every student wants to believe in, an obstacles course, a social framework and an uncharted territory exploration. All of them can be seen as Pleasant Learning Experiences. To define each in depth:

The pleasure of the senses: make sure students are motivated with the work to be done. “See” the final results, for example, spending the last session of the course to perform oral presentations of the work done. Make the best works visible.

A good story to believe in: the teacher must also be motivated with the story in order to transmit enthusiasm to the students. The teacher may play different roles in the story while acting as the facilitator or customer. The stories may change from project to project. Therefore the content needs to be appealing to the professor too.

The obstacle course: constant innovation is a real obstacle race that the teacher will face as a challenge. Participating with students in projects as a consultant implies additional difficulties. The professor will help students to overcome the obstacles being found.

Social framework: the communication student / teacher changes drastically with this new approach of learning. And the new technologies allow creating new channels of communication with the faculty: forums, chats, videoconferences, content managers, etc. Furthermore, an interdisciplinary approach between subjects is a very motivational new framework for social interaction.

Uncharted territory: with this new model of learning, the student becomes the main character, and in this new situation, the teacher should execute many more tasks apart from explaining the content. New projects and teaching activities each year, monitoring of students, acting as a consultant, evaluating competences, open statements, etc.

Credits info

Certificate of attendance is provided

Fee info

EUR 1900: Course + Course materials + Housing