Making of a Student Game: Introduction

I have been inspired by an acquaintance of mine to try and get at least one blog post written a week. She is doing the Wordpress blog post a week challenge. Her blog covers a variety of topics, but caught me initially due to its perspective and pointers on management and leadership. It is written by someone with years of experience on that topic. I encourage you to check it out at blog.socketsandlightbulbs.com.

I decided to blog about my experiences working on my Senior Team Project at Champlain College. This is a two semester long class that all seniors in the game development program have to take. The first semester consists of teams of 3-4 students from different backgrounds (programming, art, design) working together to make a vertical slice of a game that they will make by the end of the year. In the first semester there were 15 teams working on a variety of projects. At the end there is a big presentation where each team gets 10 minutes to show what they have done in the semester. During this presentation they are also trying to convince the game faculty why their game is feasible to move on next semester as well as pitching it to other students to get them interested in joining their game.

The pitch to the faculty consists of showing what we have done so far with the number of students we have as well as a plan for the next semester. We need to prove that the game can actually be finished with one more semester. This pitch along with our work effort over the semester are the major determining factors in who goes on. The pitch to the students is to get them excited about the project so that they would want to work on it the next semester if their team gets cut. For example in our project part of our pitch to the design students is that they will be able to own at least one level as a portfolio piece that they could then point to in an interview and say I made this.

Moving to the next semester 10 of the teams were cut this year, leaving only 5 left. The number of teams change from year to year as the number of students change from year to year. The teams that are cut are split up and the students are placed on teams that require their skill set. The teams that move on could request to have certain students on their team with a reason why.

My team was one that went forward to the next semester (this semester), which is something that I am really happy about. On top of that the students that were put on our team were all great additions. Those of us who were on the team last semester are the leads our disciplines this semester. So, for example, I am the lead programmer on my project.

So in an attempt to keep this post from becoming too long I'll end here.

Future posts will include:

• The Game Overview: so you know what we are making and who the team consists of
  
• About Me: more about the author of these posts
• Week 1: a description of what went on this week since the first week of classes are not even over yet
  

If you have any questions, want more information about any part of this post, or just have something to add please leave a comment.