School of Education, iSchool bring first global game design event to campus
CORRECTION: The original headline for this article, ‘iSchool brings global game design event to campus for first time,’ was inaccurate. The event was brought to campus by both the iSchool and the School of Education. The Daily Orange regrets this error.
In about 48 hours, Ari Abramovsky created a game that combined the adventures of Super Mario and music of Guitar Hero.
Abramovsky was one of the people across the world working together to brainstorm, design and develop board and digital games for the third annual 48-hour Global Game Jam event. Sixteen people participated in the Game Jam event last weekend at SU, including 11 SU students.
‘This is a game that we made in just two days,’ said Abramovsky, who worked on the game called ‘Crescendo’ and who is a doctoral student of instructional design, development and evaluation. ‘It makes me think — what if we had money? We’d be able to develop this concept of soul searching into a really extraordinary game.’
This is SU’s first time participating in the event, which took place in the School of Education and was co-sponsored by the School of Information Studies and the School of Education. The event began Friday at 5 p.m. and lasted until Sunday at 5:30 p.m.
‘There were really two goals,’ said Nilay Yildirim, a Game Jam organizer and doctoral student in instructional design, development and evaluation. ‘The first goal was to unite anyone interested in games around the world. It encouraged friendly competition plus collaboration. At the same time, we wanted to unite the campus and the community.’
The International Game Developers Association began the event in 2009 to challenge participants to develop a game prototype with a specific theme within 48 hours. This year’s theme, announced Friday afternoon, was extinction.
Following an introductory video about the purpose of games, players had a half-hour to eat and meet the other contestants. They were then asked to decide whether they wanted to work on board games or digital games and divided themselves into three groups, said Scott Nicholson, an associate professor at the iSchool. Two teams worked on game board designs, and one team dealt with digital design.
‘Each player became really involved,’ said Alan Foley, an associate professor of instructional design, development and evaluation, who helped organize the event. ‘Most participants just wanted to learn, to see how games are made and be part of the process.’
Nina Morrissey, a sophomore industrial, interaction and design major, said she found the process both exciting and exhausting.
‘It was definitely exciting because this was a global event,’ Morrissey said. ‘Thousands of games were created in the past couple of days, and we were part of that. It was also tiring to spend so many hours in a room and stressful because we only had two days to develop a great idea.’
Each game designed by SU students won an award. A board game called ‘Infection/Extinction’ won the Best Game Play Award. Another board game called ‘Renaissance 2009’ won the Best Visual Design Award. ‘Crescendo,’ the digital game, won the Most Innovative Game Award. ‘Crescendo’ revolved around Lionel, a character running from the darkness to the light to escape extinction.
People are never too old to play games or develop them, said Nicholson.
Nicholson, who also founded the Library Game Lab at SU, said games transcend all ages.
‘Games have the power to change lives above and beyond their recreational purposes,’ Nicholson said. ‘Games are definitely for little kids, but they are also for big kids.’
Published on January 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm
