A presentation given at the SENSE09 workshop in Kaiserslautern in March 3, 2009. The related paper can be found at http://www.kakupesa.net/kakk/docs/sense2009.pdf
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1. Playful Cleverness Revisited:open-source game development as
a method for teaching software engineering Mart Laanpere Centre for
Educational Technology, Tallinn University Kaido Kikkas Institute
of Informatics, Tallinn University Estonian Information Technology
College
2. The A-Ha! Experience
In that instant, I as a Christian thought I could feel
something of the satisfaction that God must have felt when He
created the world - Tom Pittman at MIT after successfully running a
computer program; around 1975
IT WORKS!!! :) Our campaign really works! Well, its not an
extremely huge piece of coding-art, but at least its playable.
Feels funny to play it :) I was quite sure it would never reach
this point.. If there was more time it would be nice to develop it
further - Sonja Merisalo at TLU after completing a campaign for
Battle for Wesnoth; Dec 2006
3. Playful Cleverness
A characteristic of the hacker culture (in its original
sense)
Doing serious work in a not-so-serious manner
Originality and creativity dominate over routine
A manifestation of the Linus' Law on motivation:
Survival
Social life
Entertainment
4. The roots
MIT Tech Model Railroad Club 1946
The Signals & Power Subcommittee
First computer science classes in 1959 (TX-0), PDP-1in 1961,
Project MAC in 1963
MIT AI Lab in 1970
Formation of the culture
For more info:Hackersby Steven Levy
5. Not business as usual
Computer science ~ rocket science
Too few people to form a market
Military undertones
Software was machine-specific
Hackers keptapartfrom managers
=> Playful Cleverness: original display of creativity
unhindered by market motives
6. Decline and return
80s: business growth, microcomputers, software as a proprietary
product
1984: Richard M. Stallman founded the FSF
1991: Linus Torvalds created Linux
90s: Internet, Linux, LAMP, KDE, GNOME....
2000s: The hackers have returned
7. The hacker way
Two major aspects
Open Source: public development, flexible and unhindered
participation, no external burden
Playful Cleverness: informal management, ha-ha, only serious!,
grassroot innovation
Technology and management both are important
8. Case Study: the courses
Two courses at Tallinn University
Open Source Management : autumn 2007, Master level, 6 students
with backgrounds in education and media
Methods and Practices of Free Software : spring 2008, Bachelor
level, 23 students with background in IT (incl. software
development)
Each team had to build a mini-campaign for the game, using
web-based teamwork
10. The Battle for Wesnoth
One of the best free/open-source games
Turn-based strategy (single or multiplayer), lots of different
units, day/night cycle,XML-like markup language, central server for
campaigns, large active community
11. A screenshot 12. A snippet of WML
[event]name=prestart[objectives]side=1[objective]description= _
"Resist until the end of the turns.
condition=win[/objective][objective]description= _ "Death of
Ryan"condition=lose[/objective][/objectives][/event] 13. Why
Wesnoth?
Initially, for the OSM course,
it matched better the diverse background of the
participants
it allowed for a wider range of different sub-tasks
it sparked the hacker-ish innovative creativity
Yet it worked with the IT people as well
14. What does it teach?
Developing a scenario for the BfW requires elements from three
different areas:
artistic/visual (units, maps, screens etc)
narrative/verbal (story)
technical/logical (WML)
For comparison: How To Become A Hacker by Eric S. Raymond
15. The building process
Storyline ,events, scenarios
Main characters and related unit types
For each scenario
Design (objectives, events)
Map design (terrain ,starting points)
Units and recruitment scheme
Coding
Coding the campaign summary
Testing and balancing
16. The results
Well-received by the diverse group
Lots of creative solutions (including some non-standard
campaigns)
Tools were adequate, but more Web 2.0 could help in a full
distance setting
The Playful Cleverness was grasped well
The game approach helps non-tech students
17. Ideas for the future
Test the same approach on other IT and media courses
Try other free/open-source games (also from different
genres)
Combine the experience with social software, 3D virtual worlds
(OpenSim, SL) and other distributed environments