Verified Gaming

In recent years, several Grand Challenges (GCs) of computing have been identified and expounded upon by various professional organizations in the U.S. and England. These GCs are typically very difficult problems that will take many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of man-years to solve. Researchers involved in identifying these problems are not going to solve them. That task will fall to our students, and our students' students. Unfortunately for GC6, the Grand Challenge focusing on Dependable Systems Evolution, interest in formal methods---both by students and within computer science faculties---falls every year and any mention of mathematics in the classroom seems to frighten students away. So the question is: How do we attract new students in computing to the area of dependable software systems?

Over the past several years at three universities we have experimented with the use of computer games as a target domain for software engineering project courses that focus on reliable systems engineering. This position paper summarizes our experiences in incorporating rigorous software engineering into courses whose projects include computer games.