The DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media is one of the largest of its kind in the US. The computer game development program, the second largest in the college, has over 150 majors. The console game development environments course, described here, is not required, but can be taken by any student in the game development program, which has two tracks: the standard concentration and a game programming concentration.

The course uses the Microsoft XNA platform to allow a diverse group of students to encounter all aspects of console game creation. The prerequisite for the course is a freshman-level course in game design that does not require any programming. Programming is deemphasized by giving students sample programs and encouraging them to share code. An important feature of the course is using the content pipeline provided with XNA that facilitates the adding of authored content to games. Advanced game development is hindered when students cannot create content that reflects their abilities. This lack lowers morale and the opportunity for success in the game industry.

All course tools except Maya are free for students. Maya is the primary modeling and animation tool and, because of its complexity, detailed instructions are given for creating acceptable content. (An open-source alternative to Maya is Blender.)

The course is divided into eight modules that are listed with brief descriptions. Grading requirements are carefully described. The results were positive, with students with programming backgrounds doing a bit better than those without, a difference Linhoff and Settle will try to minimize in the future. The experience was good for both groups: programmers learned how to create models, animations, and sounds, while nonprogrammers wrote scripts, modified code, and used the content pipeline. One of the goals of this course is to improve the content quality of more advanced courses. In the future, Linhoff and Settle plan to split this course into two courses, one slightly more introductory, and the other, run later in the curriculum, more advanced.

DePaul received an XNA lab grant from Microsoft that provided Xbox 360 consoles. However, XNA games will run on a Windows PC and do not require game consoles, so this course would also be appropriate for teaching Windows game development using XNA. Linhoff and Settle provide good justification for their course and give useful details regarding its implementation. DePaul has been successful in attracting students, and game development is clearly a popular program. The course described here would also be attractive in less ambitious programs and, as is planned at DePaul, could lead to further courses in XNA game development.