Arizona student does Master's thesis on game development

Carnegie Melon isn't the only University getting their game on today. Gamasutra is highlighting this thesis from a graduate student of Arizona State University. Entitled "A Flexible and Expandable Architecture for Computer Games," Jeff Plummer (the student in question) discuss how, while the gaming industry has expanded by leaps and bounds, its development process "remains very much unchanged from the early days of programming." Plummer proposes a new architecture, an amalgamation of different components "that can enjoy modifiability, expandability, and maintainability," and potentially reduce the amount of work required for development.

The full thesis (available via Gamasutra) is a bit long, spanning over 400 pages, with about 100 pages devoted to analyses of Starcraft and Unreal Tournament (Appendix A). The depth of the paper is enormous, so do not look into this expecting a fun read, but do marvel at the author, who can now say that he earned his master's degree playing Starcraft.