Rice Gaming Group

The computer gaming industry has become a major component of our present society. Computer gaming provides entertainment to millions and flourishes on the collaboration of many individuals from a variety of different disciplines encompassing areas such as computer science, mathematics, physics, and art. As the industry has matured, a variety of issues have arisen. These issues include: real-time graphics quality, decreasing game development cycles, and game success evaluation techniques. There has also been a recent push for "serious games", games that are used for persuasive or educational training. This area is fueled by educational and corporate organizations.

The academic gaming group at Rice University strives to make significant contributions in some the areas mentioned above. Currently, our primary focus is to develop tools to shorten the development cycles of games, or simulations, by quickly prototyping game ideas. From previous experience in game development, we have witnessed the benefits of being able to have a prototype of a new game design prepared in a matter of hours, not weeks. Improvements in the prototyping stage of the development timeline will expedite the entire game creation process and free up resources that could potentially be wasted on an unused design.