Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 31, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
As part of a cooperation agreement between Fraunhofer IGD Rostock and the Berlin Games Academy, the developers of both institutes intend to develop new, marketable technology solutions for computer games. Projects are to be launched to research technologies that cannot yet be implemented in the games industry today. These include, for example, emotion recognition in games in order to be able to measure the quality of computer games and, in the future, develop games that react to the emotional state of users. These possibilities will then not only be usable in the games sector, but will also be used in other computer applications.
“In the Games Academy we have found a partner with whom we will jointly pave the way to industrial practice,” explains Holger Diener, head of the Entertainment Technologies department at Fraunhofer IGD in Rostock. For Thomas Dlugaiczyk, rector of the Games Academy in Berlin, the Rostock IGD is also an ideal partner for allowing scientific and well-founded research results to flow into the games sector. “With this cooperation, we are building a bridge between industry and research. We are using the collaboration to meet the needs and trends of the industry quickly and with market-oriented products,” says Dlugaiczyk.
The Games Academy was founded in 2000 as Germany’s first specialist school for computer and video game production. It offers its students modern and practical training in the games sector. Alongside daily teaching, the academy works with partners from research and development who can contribute a more theoretical viewpoint to various research projects.
In Germany alone, more than one billion euros are spent on computer games each year. The games sector will therefore remain a profitable market in the future that needs to be opened up. Today, entire teams of programmers and graphic artists as well as seven-figure production costs are required to hold one’s own in the fast-moving market. With the growing demands on computer games, new technologies are constantly being developed that make playing more exciting and multifaceted.
