Hi, I'm Andy, and this is my personal website. I am a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Director of the Game Design & Development program therein. So it kind of goes without saying that I’m into games. More importantly, I am into making them, into the underlying technology that makes them tick, and most importantly into the concepts of games as virtual worlds and the expanding metaverse. It is so much fun! As part of the games program, we’ve put up a little website about it, and it features the work of some of my students in the mix of students projects. I’m much more proud of their work at this point than I am of my own, never underestimate the capabilities of an enterprising student body. The fact that I can walk into Best Buy and browse games where my students are in the credits absolutely floors me. Still. So be sure to check out the games.rit.edu website, and download and play the games!

The "recent" project I'm working on is an evironment called M.U.P.P.E.T.S. for use in introductory programming education. Through capitalizing on research in the areas of gaming and virtual community social psychology, RIT is engaged in a project to develop a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) entitled “The Multi-User Programming Pedagogy for Enhancing Traditional Study” (M.U.P.P.E.T.S.). The M.U.P.P.E.T.S. system will be aimed specifically at engaging upper-division students in the education of lower-division students through their first-year programming core. The M.U.P.P.E.T.S. team is building upon existing research and technical developments in the field to design and construct a CVE and supporting infrastructure that allows students to write very simple Java® or C# code similar to, and constructed around the same pedagogical issues as, code written in a more traditional course of first year study. As part of the M.U.P.P.E.T.S. system, however, this code can now control objects in a shared virtual world very much like an online massively-multiplayer game that many prospective students are already familiar with. Upper level students also populate the system in a structure of their own, and this population will be aimed at encouraging and rewarding student engagement and peer knowledge-transmission.

We've published several papers on this, and even ran a SIGGRAPH course in 2005. Microsoft Research is the primary sponsor of this activity at this point, for which I am very grateful. For more information or to start nosing about with the engine, visit the M.U.P.P.E.T.S. website.

Well the latest game of goodness is the Aliens game that my MS in GD&D students made (with some help from some talented undergrads that will soon be grads). Hats off to them, it's fantastic. I made them write it in both C/C++ and XNA, and while it was a tough road for a while, I think they learned a great deal by comparing the processes and design philosophies. It's ALL them - the entire engine, the game play, the graphics, everything. And... it's just absolutely gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to start abducting cows right away! We'll be showing this off at Gamefest for Microsoft, and probably at the Game Developer's Conference booth in 2008. But I can't resist posting a preview: