Introduction:

In game development curriculum, mastering programming skills is important. Traditional methods to teach programming in computer science curriculum often face challenges in relevance for game development students, leaning towards individual mastery of the knowledge. This has shown a sign of contrast with the collaborative nature of game design and development courses where teamwork is emphasized. In our approach, especially for a game programming assignment that is often integrated with computer graphics requirements, we introduce the strategy of embedding “imagined social elements” into individual programming assignments, simulating team dynamics without a formal team structure. Through this approach, an assignment promotes the integration of independent contributions while maintaining the individual rigor essential for programming practices. The proposed assignment aims to be adopted in a game programming course. We have set up a git repository for this assignment (https://github.com/LizhouCao/Integrating-Independent-Contributions-in-a-Game-Programming-Assignment.git), with build instructions and required dependencies included.