I love games. Games are not dumb. Games can be innovative, interesting, and fun.

Playing games has, in part, shaped my way of thinking. Somewhere deep inside me there's a little bit of Space Invaders, River Raid, Mega Man, Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Civilization, StarCraft, Katamari Damacy, Fallout 3, League of Legends, and Angry Birds. When I started teaching here at Stony Brook, Universities around the country were just starting to look at game development as a serious academic discipline. Now there are Game Dev programs at nearly every University.

My love for games and my interest in Computer Graphics as a graduate student is what led me to leading the department's effort to incorportate more game programming into our curriculum. In so doing, we have revamped the format and content for what was an existing, but discontinued course, CSE 380, Computer Game Programming, and introduced a new course, CSE 381, Advanced Game Programming. In addition, I created the Game Progrogramming Specialization, which operates within the requirements of the Computer Science Major for undergraduate students. The specialization is for a Computer Scientist who may wish to translate ones skills into a career as a game programmer.

I also advise student research in gaming, and founded and coordinate our annual Game Programming Competition. Studying games is a great way to learn about technology because modern games are complex real-time systems that incorporate cutting edge graphics, networking, artificial intelligence, memory management, concurrency, and just about every other sub-field of Computer Science. If you're interested, visit the Stony Brook University Game Programming YouTube Channel to see entries from recent competitions. Or, try playing some of the student games provided below.