by Alex Palombo(Right: Screenshot of "Paradoxical Irony," one of two games developed during the 24-hour Game Jam)
Junior Corey Jeffers said he designed his best video game his freshman year at Ithaca College. The game was called "Sadiyah Search," and delved into the complex history of the Middle East with rich graphics to match the intense plot. The game - part of the serious gaming genre - took him about three months to complete, and involved everyone on his floor. His friend down the hall did the graphics, his RA composed the synthesizer score, his roommate wrote the story and his floormates recorded the voiceovers.
"I love that game, still to this day," he said.
Jeffers and other gamers got their chance to create their own videogames at the first annual Ithaca Game Jam on Nov. 7. Hosted by the IC Game Developers Club, the event gave graphic designers, sound designers, writers and programmers 24 hours to build their interactive multiplayer dreams from scratch.
Club President Chris Hendrickson said that teams typically divide the rolls of animation, sound and programming among themselves. They start with the concept and goal of the game, and then use technology like Photoshop and 3-D animation software Maya to put together the final product.
"The whole time, you have the project building and building from different people working the whole time as hard as they can on whatever specifics there are," he said. "It's kind of amazing how it all comes together so quickly."
The Jam is based on last year's Global Game Jam, which both Jeffers and junior Ryan Giglio attended in Albany, N.Y. The Jam was hosted simultaneously worldwide, and gave teams 72 hours to create a game on the computer. Both Jeffers and Giglio are officers in the Game Developing Club at IC - Jeffers is the treasurer, Giglio is the vice president.
Hendrickson said that like the Global Game Jam, all the teams will start with the same specifications for the games, but will not end up with the same results. This year, the Ithaca Game Jam quote was "If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun." Both teams came up with vastly different results, as Hendrickson predicted.
"Everybody is working from one limitation," he said. "But from imagination, it goes in so many different directions."
The two games that came out of the quote were called "Jimmy's Adventure" and "Paradoxical Irony." In the first game, Jimmy is supposed to break the rules that his grandmother gives him, so that he can move from level to level. The second more developed game, "Paradoxical Irony," players must use different keys to break the four basic rules of the game: players cannot walk through walls, touch fire, breath underwater, or live after being shot.
Club advisor Kim Gregson said that both teams did a huge amount of work, but had programming trouble due to the time constraints of the challenge.
"At about 2 a.m., not two hours in, both groups went 'This isn't going to work,' and had to totally reprogram how they were going to do it," she said. "But the idea was still there, and their level concepts were still there, but they realzed what they ahd started with as a basis kept them from jumping or something."
Gregson said that the Jam not only gave aspiring designers the chance to create their dream games, but also introduced designers to each other and incorporated team members outside of the classroom. In addition to participants at Ithaca College, teams called in help from other students - including a Skype to one team member who was studying abroad in Italy.
Junior Giovanni Colantonio, host if ICTV's game-centric show "Game Over," also agrees that gaming and designing games can bring people together."I think it's a really interesting idea to have people with the same interests to come together to create art together," he said.
Gregson argues that game design not only creates art, but useful technology to other fields as well. She cites the serious games genre as proof of this, and also extends the scientific developments of game designers to other fields. Citing the motion sensitive Wii-mote and Microsoft's Project Natal, she said that videogame technology has massive potential for other fields, including medicine. And with higher quailty graphics and games, more research into faster tecnhology will be done in all fields to keep up.
"It's bringing those things that you see in science fiction into the house," she said. "So everybody's exposed to it and you start to see it as a normal part of life. To me, that's the biggest boom to technology, research, and funding in the future. If I can use it in my house, I want to see more of it developed."
(Below: Students at Game Jam talk about the rejection of the Gaming Major at the Park School of Communications)
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