Developing Gaming as an Art Form
We will seek to develop computer games as distinct, and distinctive, art forms. One of the ways we seek to distinguish our program from others is by not merely duplicating existing commercial game experiences but by developing new expressive game worlds and interaction modalities. These would use the technologies of gaming and its interactive, open-ended paradigm, but seek to create an experience that draws less on battles and warfare than on the arts and other aesthetic trajectories.


Developing Computing Technology for Games
We will develop new algorithms for graphics, new game "AI", and new devices and interfaces for gaming. We will also seek greater innovation in gaming through the development of notions of ubiquitous computing and connecting the world of gaming to the new opportunities of mobile computing.


Cultural Impact of Gaming
Research under this theme examines the way games are changing culture, society and the individual. Gaming is beginning to play new roles in creating transnational communities, and is affecting virtual and intellectual property issues and censorship issues.


Game Reception (Criticism, Aesthetics, History)
This theme will focus on understanding the game in its cultural, social and psychological contexts. It will examine and critique particular games and genres, it will develop new aesthetic models or principles.

The GRP will balance each of these primary research areas while at the same time ensuring collaborations and a fluid exchange of ideas among them. Therefore a primary activity of the GRP is to develop a community of game researchers on this campus and in contact with other communities around the world. To this end, the GRP plans to host monthly talks and presentations of game-related work with both local and visiting researchers. Each year we hope to host an International Symposium on Gaming Research. Each year, too, we hope to bring together multi-disciplinary teams of students and faculty to design and create one or more new games. We hope to expand on his activity and engage a broader range of students and faculty in the process. These games will draw on and influence the research in cultural impact and reception. At the same time, they will better prepare our students for entering the job market, whether the gaming industry or academia.

Joining together faculty and students across the many disciplines of the University will lead to joint research proposals that we believe will contribute to the success of the GRP. Similarly, we believe the GRP will successfully spawn a range of new courses that will attract enormous numbers of students. An initial goal is to develop new courses around the research interests of faculty in the GRP. These courses can be used to offer a "Certificate in Gaming" to students who complete a range of them. Eventually, if this certificate is indeed as popular (with both faculty and students) as we suspect, it may lead to new interdisciplinary majors in gaming.