Splat! er, shmup? A postmortem on a capstone production experience

Developing large-scale software applications in teams has long been a popular feature of capstone courses in computing degree programs, particularly in the fields of computer science and software engineering. Instructors utilize real world problems as well as external clients to motivate the students and to provide authentic experiences. Within the field of game design and development, students have strong desires to make and ship a game or series of games during their collegiate experience. To address this need, we created a production studio course offering that addressed the desires of students to create a game as a culminating experience while focusing upon the production process and challenges that are particular to the game industry. In this paper we describe the process undertaken by students, faculty and staff to ship a game. We discuss the successes and failures of the team and in achieving their goals. We show the similarities and differences between the process of developing and shipping a game and other types of large-scale software design and development projects undertaken in similar courses.