Neomancer: An Exercise in Interdisciplinary Academic Game Development

Academic interest in game development and game studies has grown steadily in recent years, with many institutions now offering courses or programs in this area. To provide a truly rich and realistic experience to students, some form of interdisciplinary or collaborative work is clearly needed as part of their education. Successful games draw upon a diverse set of talents and backgrounds from their creators, and so an interdisciplinary exposure is crucial to students studying games and game development. This paper presents the experiences from precisely this sort of academic exercise—an interdisciplinary game development project called Neomancer. This project has involved nearly 50 participants from the University of Western Ontario and Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology, working together for the past several months. This paper discusses the background and history of the Neomancer project, and presents some of the lessons learned to date from this collaborative venture.