MSc Computer Games & Entertainment
In the Press
Gaming expert strengthens industry links at Goldsmiths
21 January 2011, TIGA
Andy Thomason, who worked for SN Systems - a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc - will be teaching Advanced Programming on the Msc Computer Games and Entertainment course. He previously worked with compiler technology and is hoping to use his links with the industry to help secure quality work placements for students.
He said "It's quite a technical course and we are looking at fundamental game programming - how to write games from scratch - as well as using existing libraries and building games from components.
"I'm hoping to make the course easy to understand because we have some Fine Art students on the course learning programming and I want everyone to enjoy learning the basics.
"That's what excites me most about Goldsmiths - the mixture of art and science that is here on the Masters programme."
His experience in industry is likely to help motivate students and show them how useful their Masters degree can be.
He said "This is quite a vocational course so knowing how to prime students for interviews will be really helpful.
"Having a Masters is becoming a central requisite for working in this kind of business and it's good for the students to be able to see how it can be used. This course encourages creativity and that can be used, not just in games, but in other fields as well."
Course co-founder Professor William Latham said: "Over the past few months there has been much discussion on how successful games courses are meeting industry requirements. Our solution to this is very simple: we seek out the best commercial individuals that have an academic vision and we take them on-board. Andy is certainly fulfilling that role."
“Aesthetics can be a tool to navigate genetic space”
29 June 2007 by Rebecca Atwood (Time Higher Education Supplement)
WILLIAM LATHAM Professor of computer games and entertainment, Goldsmiths
As an art student, William Latham went through every style of art.
“I reached the conclusion that modern art has pretty much run out of steam - in some ways it is just going round and round in circles,” he says.
The future, as he saw it, lay in computer games and graphics - and so he turned to “computer art”.
Not everyone takes an instant liking to Latham’s “virtual” sculptures and “organic” computer-generated images.
“The art world definitely did not like computers, and they still don’t,” says Professor Latham, professor of computer games and entertainment at Goldsmiths, University of London.
But Professor Latham, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, was unperturbed.
He has gone on to carve out a successful career as both artist and businessman, landing a number one hit with the game, The Thing, after founding his own company, and closing deals of up to $5 million (£2.5 million) with US software giants.
With an industrial chemist as a father and a music teacher and composer as a mother, perhaps it is not altogether surprising that Latham’s work challenges the conventional boundaries between science and nature, maths and art.
It was the six-year period from 1987, when Latham worked as an IBM research fellow, that he describes as “formative”. There he teamed up with IBM mathematician Stephen Todd to develop new computer art software that allows the user to develop mutating images.
Hit a button, and the computer generates limitless variations of an image - the user picks out what they find pleasing, and this can then be refined again.
“What was really interesting was that very natural-looking forms would emerge from the software,” Professor Latham says. “It is almost like an alternative evolutionary system from another planet - a kind of synthetic nature. The idea is that it is like being a gardener, you select what you like, to grow new forms - a bit like breeding greyhounds or budgerigars.”
The resulting pieces, which toured the world, were loved or hated - often hated, he says. He describes the process as “a kind of digital Darwinism”.
He says: “Artists in the 21st century have become comic figures. I go back to more of a Leonardo approach, where artists were working with mathematicians around Euclidean geometry and classical perspective - exactly the space where computer graphics resides.”
All this was put on hold for ten years while Professor Latham set up his own company, Computer Artworks, which under his direction grew from a Soho attic studio into a company of 65 employees with a turnover of £5 million.
In March, Professor Latham left his post as Running Stream professor of creative technology at Leeds Metropolitan University to join Goldsmiths, heading up a new MSc in computer games, and he has returned to his “mutation art”.
Professor Latham’s latest interdisciplinary project sees him working with the Bioinformatics Group at Imperial College London, on new ways of visualising DNA data. Together with his colleague Frederic Fol Leymarie, he has produced a film that depicts an evolving protein structure.
“In two and a half minutes the film covers approximately 90 million years - 45 million years back in time, then 45 million years forward,” Professor Latham says. So complex was the data used to make the film, it required use of a supercomputer - the National Grid Service at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. DNA data was also used to create the soundtrack.
The film’s shifting shapes reveal that there are periods in history where changes occurred more rapidly - now scientists want to find out why.
“Our system currently amplifies numerical values into a visual form. It is like a metaphor - it may not be 100 per cent accurate, but we can refine it. Already visualising the data in this way is bringing new insights,” he says.
Ultimately, he hopes to develop a visual tool for spotting genetic defects, or for designing new drugs. “Genetics is what is going to liberate humans from the animal kingdom - though there are going to be some tricky questions along the way.”
Professor Latham believes there is a connection between aesthetics and elegance in nature. Converting the numeric values used by geneticists into a visual form allows artists to engage with the work of scientists on an aesthetic level, he says.
“The idea is that aesthetics can be used as a navigation tool in genetic space, as often the most successful solution - and elegant, economical solution - is also the most visually aesthetic.”
But it is the fact that his work questions human creativity that usually provokes the strongest reactions. He recently gave a talk to a team of top architects, demonstrating a “house mutation program”. One click of a mouse can bring up thousands of automatically generated design variants.
“The results we get are as good as a designer’s, if not better. They absolutely hated it.
“Arguably human creativity is not that great,” he says.
I graduated from Oxford University with a BFA in 1982, and from the Royal College of Art 1985 with an MA.
My first job was at IBM’s UK Scientific Centre in Winchester as a research fellow.
My main challenge is to balance my commercial interests and being “hands on” with new R&D work across a wide range of areas from genetic architecture to synthetic protein-folding.
What I hate most is Big Brother and everything that goes with it.
In ten years' time I hope for seamless interfaces for complex software packages, and the resolution of ethical issues surrounding genetic engineering.
Malta's potential in digital games production comes under the spotlight
22 April 2010, Times of Malta, by Malcol Zammit
".. William Lathams, chief executive officer, Games Audit Ltd, and professor in the Computing Department at London's Goldsmiths University, highlighted the fragmentation and expansion of the games industry. The drift towards online games "caught everybody out". This is a dynamic industry with high-end games achieving ever-growing levels of realism. At the other end of the spectrum are casual games: free, very easy to use, a low barrier to entry for producers, but an area plagued with copyright infringement. There are also online web browser games, iPhone games, hybrid games and social networking games.
The development process for a high-end game requires a large multi-disciplinary team of story writers, musicians, good artists, good programmers, to name a few, where creative energy is just as important as programming skills. He drew attention to the current worldwide skills shortage in digital games production. Given its strength in ICT, Malta can leverage this advantage."
Building the perfect coder by Andy Thomason
5 April 2011, #AltDevBlogADay
Andy Thomason has worked in games since the ’70s when computers were made from straw and beeswax. He currently works in Bristol, UK developing industry standard console development tools and is a Games Programming lecturer at Goldsmiths college in London.
The smell of fresh blood
What are the most irritating things about graduate coders fresh from university? The constant questions about simple programming matters or their lack of math skills or just their personal hygiene?
I guess that this will depend on where they came from and how practical the course was. A large number of computer science courses are very theoretical and don’t really prepare students for the harsh reality of bum-on-seat coding. The programming languages they teach on some courses can be irrelevant to anything but the most eclectic computer science PHD if they teach programming at all. I’ve seen CVs where the computer science course taken consists of linear algebra and calculus with a few weeks of programming in LISP tacked onto the end – no doubt highly respectable, but utterly useless for games.
My own university experience was similar as a physicist although I can now say that everything was eventually very useful, even the bits about operating nuclear reactors – well maybe not, but it makes great party conversation.
So, what are the things that game studios most want in a coder? Well it turns out that a recent survey by Aardvark Swift [2] – a U.K. Based games recruitment agency – shows that C++ and Math skills are the top two requirements. I guess this is hardly surprising, but it implies that games studios are willing to train “on-the-job” for the other basic skills like 3D geometry, Graphics APIs, Middleware, Audio and so on. This is obviously going to cost the studio, which will probably not have engineers dedicated to teaching.
My experience of “training” at games studios has been the odd one day C++ course, maybe a version control course and some management training involving building rafts and getting covered with mud in Wales, hardly a preparation for deferred rendering, GPGPU pipelines and parallax mapping.
Small wonder then that every day we get code through the developer support at my day job that has too many divides and algorithms copied from ten year old websites that have more if statements than a Rudyard Kipling poem.
Send us your students
These days, I am partly to blame as I am helping to run a MSc course at Goldsmiths in London to convert mundane programmers into games programmers.
What we are teaching is primarily coding and math. We are focusing on OpenGL, especially GLES2, shaders being essential to the process. Although we teach a little DirectX, it has become a little less relevant with the rise of mobile devices and with consoles switching to GLES variants.
In particular we find that GLUT is an excellent teaching aid, check out [1] for some simple glut examples. The students get to build a Collada-based game engine from scratch which this year we named “Mammoth” [3] after its unsubtle size – all first game engines are too big!
We have some great students who have mostly worked in web development and other industries for a few years or come from good universities in Scandinavia or elsewhere where industry connections are a high priority. We would like to see more Asian students as the subcontinent and China are destined to be the power houses of coding in the future.
What is the stuff of games?
GLUT/GL provides quite a simple system for building 2D games as well as 3D games. My main complaint with coding samples is that they are usually too complex. There is a real difference between a “sample” and a “demo”. A sample is usually quite short with little or no framework support. The ideal sample is twenty to a hundred lines long in a single file. I hate to compliment Microsoft, but their API documentation is very good with nice, neat samples for many of the calls.
I am also pleased to see that the samples that come with console SDKs have improved considerably. There is a place for demos, however, as they inspire deeper understanding once the basics have been mastered. But as documentation for APIs, they can be very tedious to pick apart.
.. continued here: #AltDevBlogADay
Goldsmiths confirms MSc in games and entertainment
11:15, Jun 25th 2007 by Michael French (Develop Magazine)
William Latham to be programme director for new Masters degree at London university
Goldsmiths has today confirmed its plans to launch a new MSc in computer games and entertainment.
As reported by Develop in April, William Latham will be heading up the course which starts in September.
The degree is designed to attract new talent to the games industry and pitched to help turn technically minded students and programmers into competent games makers.
The course is focused on C++, new tehcnology and team work and can be taken on a one or two year basis.
Latham explained: “This is a very exciting programme and students who do this MSc will gain a firm positioning for a career in the multi-billion pounds Games and Entertainment industries, now expanding across console games, massively multiplayer games, casual games, serious or learning games, mobile and PC games, and new emerging areas of social
networking games.
“There is a big shortfall in the UK for good games programmers and technical managers/directors and this course will address this serious shortfall. During the course there will be opportunities and events for industry networking to hopefully secure jobs for students in the UK or abroad before they finish.”
Latham takes Goldsmiths post
15:15, Apr 18th 2007 by Michael French (Develop Magazine)
Developer William Latham has joined Goldsmiths University as professor of computer games.
Latham joins the university’s department of computing this month where he will work on developing a Masters in Computer Gaming and Entertainment, a course that may start as early as September for the 07/08 academic year.
At Goldsmiths he will also be working on the Mutator2 Procedural Modelling Project.
Previously, Latham worked as a research fellow at IBM from 1987 to 1993 and then spent 10 years in games development at Computer Artworks which created movie spin-off The Thing.
University unveils games course
Monday, 16 April 2007, 17:35 GMT 18:35 UK (BBC News)
London’s Goldsmiths college has appointed a professor to head a new masters course in computer games.
Students will learn cutting-edge games programming and have a chance to create their own game, the university said.
The course is aimed at City programmers looking for a career change as well as computer graduates.
“There is a big skills shortage in the UK for good games programmers,” said Prof William Latham. “We’re losing out to the US at the moment.”
The Thing
An increasing number of UK universities offer degree courses in games design and development at graduate and post-graduate level.
“The games industry is worth more than Hollywood and television put together,” said Mr Latham.
Some of the features of the course including multi-core programming, the technology used in the latest games consoles.
“The course will involve playing games but hopefully games they will have programmed themselves,” said Mr Latham.
Mr Latham is the founder of a large UK computer development company which developed hit games such as The Thing.
The course begins in autumn 2007.
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