Last Friday, the DCC Great Hall was filled with an assortment of student-created video games for the Fourth Annual Game Festival and Symposium.
The Game Festival and Symposium was begun in 2004, as a place for students to showcase games that they have created over the twelve months prior to the event. The event also includes a day for a Game Symposium, where students have the opportunity to attend various panel discussions.
Games and Simulation faculty choose the games for the exhibit from among a variety of student games created in the past year. At this year’s Game Festival, fifteen separate teams of students were chosen to exhibit their work. This year also saw an expansion of the exposition to include a regional audience as opposed to just the RPI community—in particular, prospective Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences freshmen applicants for the 2007-08 school year visiting for Accepted Students’ Day. The DCC Great Hall was filled for about three hours, according to School of Humanities and Social Sciences Director of Communication Donald A. Moore.
One of the games shown at the exposition was called Heist, where the player is put into the shoes of Steven Stickler, who is an unemployed middle class American “fighting to make ends meet,” according to the team of students who developed the game, which includes Jeffrey Dingman ’08, Jose Medina ’08, Henry Tsang ’07, Patrick Donnelly ’08, and Jason Tamulonis ’07. The game tracks Steven Stickler’s attempt to pull off the perfect heist, putting players up against police and members of a SWAT team. The team designed the game to make players be stealthy and quick “in order to accomplish a simple task.”
ArmzArena was another one of the games featured on Friday, created by James Morris-King ’07, Ben Frost ’07, Charles Otlowski ’07, and Chi Chi Nwaizu ’07. The 2D game supports up to four players and puts players in a death-match style game, featuring several weapons and projectiles that are used to defeat opponents. The team of students designed levels so that players must be quick and alert to triumph.
The winning game, however, was created by Team Tempo. The team’s game was called Mogg and was an arcade-style shooter, where the players must advance through levels by speeding up to meet a constant time.
To do this, players must “destroy enemies in quick succession and form a combo,” according to the team. “A high enough combo will increase the player’s speed, cause enemies to spawn more rapidly, and decrease the time window for continuing a combo.” Game designer Kenny Johnson ’07 also said, “It’s clever how the game ties music and tempo into a core game mechanic of speed and getting to the next level on time.” Members of the team that designed the game also include Ricardo Cunha ’07, Adam Gaige ’07, Perry Lynch ’07, Brian McDonald ’07, Bao Nguyen ’07, and Huxley Seidman ’07.
“This year, for the first time, we were able to offer cash prizes for the top five teams as a result of the new Vicarious Visions-sponsored Student Challenge,” said Moore. The CEO of Vicarious Visions, Karthik Bala ’97, led a four-person judging panel that awarded prizes of $500 to the first place team, $375 to 2nd place, $250 to 3rd place, $175 to 4th place, and $125 for the fifth place team.
The second day of the GameFest consists of various panel discussions. The theme for this year’s symposium was “Emerging Terrain in Games and Simulation,” and this year included a special presentation of the capAbility Games Research Project. This demonstration took place Saturday morning in the Biotech Auditorium. The capAbility Games project is a collaborative effort between the Center for Disability Services Adult Day Services Division and RPI students under the direction of Associate Professor of Integrated Arts, Kathleen Ruiz. The goal of this project is to create a series of simulated learning environments and games for individuals with disabilities to learn skills related to independence in their daily lives, such as grocery shopping. The current prototype uses a joystick, and creates a virtual layout of the local Price Chopper.
