Fun in CS2

We report our experience of including the implementation of a player of a computer game as a programming project in a CS2 course focusing in data structures and algorithms. Every semester, an instructor designs the rules of a game, prepares its visualization, and implements an elementary player with a very simple strategy. The game is then delivered to students who, as a first step in order to pass the project, must program a player that wins the elementary player. Then, a tournament begins among all the students with accepted players. At every round of this tournament a player is eliminated until just one player, the champion, survives. Grades for this assignment are computed automatically and increasingly with respect to the round where students have been eliminated. The result is a fun and very motivating programming experience for our students.