Leveraging role play to explore software and game development process

Role play has a long history as a tool for learning. It is often used to simulate practices in the world in an environment where consequences can be mitigated. Despite its effective use by the armed forces, emergency responders, negotiators, and political campaign managers, role play is a tool seldom used in STEM classrooms. In this paper, we will describe the incorporation of certain aspects of role play in a game development processes course. This course, similar to courses in software engineering, focuses students on the entire product life cycle and engages them to complete a project from start to finish during the term. We used role play techniques to engage the students more fully in the processes of development by creating a scenario in which the students have suddenly become the owners of an independent game studio. During the semester, we engaged them as the owners on issues of business and legal concerns along with the typical production and process concerns of making their product. We had them face issues of missed deadlines and products that were not ready for production. We have informal evaluation in terms of feedback from end of the semester debriefs and classroom observations. We are using that for further refinements in the next course cycle.