Visual arts student co-creates winning video game in 48-hour challenge
Max Szyc | Fulcrum Staff
INDIE VIDEO GAME development is gaining increased traction in the technological world, and one University of Ottawa student can attest to that.
Carleton University hosted Ottawa’s annual Global Game Jam on Jan. 25–27, an event where teams of students are given 48 hours to conceptualize and create a playable video game.
First-year visual arts student Dawn Blair was among the competitors at this year’s event.
“Indie development is on the rise right now all over the world,” she said. “I have a lot of friends in different computer science programs and they are always keeping me up to date on different competitions that are going on. We developed a community that’s really thriving right now.”
Independent video game development has been under the spotlight in the last few years thanks to breakout successes like Super Meat Boy and Minecraft. Both games were developed by teams of only two people but managed to become international successes.
Blair worked on art and sound for her team, which consisted of three Carleton students—one who programmed, one who created art, and another who handled both—and another student from the University of Toronto who came down to help the team with additional programming.
The competition is an annual tradition that is held not only across Canada, but throughout the world.
Many companies sponsored the event, including Microsoft. In order to promote the newly released Windows 8 operating system, competitors were entered in a draw to win a Microsoft Surface tablet and were given credits for having their games published on the Windows 8 app store, which could be redeemed for prizes such as Xbox consoles and Kinect devices.
“Companies sponsor these events because indie programming is a big deal right now,” said Blair. “They want to support the up-and-coming coders.”
In an effort to prevent cheating, the teams were told about the theme of their games at the start of the event. This year, organizers merely played the sound of a heartbeat, which the teams interpreted in a myriad of ways. After three hours of debate, Blair’s team settled on an idea.
“We ended up deciding on tiny robots with hearts strapped to their backs who are trying to escape from the underground before they run out of blood,” Blair described. “It’s a little macabre.”
The game, entitled </3 (pronounced less than slash three), is a Dig Dug-influenced adventure computer game in which the player controls a robot who is trying to escape from an underground world where enemies—such as bats and creatures the team nicknamed “diggers”—are constantly out to stop the player from making it to the surface. The character’s health metre, in the form of a blood bag, doubles as a time limit and decreases as the player takes damage. The character is equipped with a small gun to defend itself against foes.
The group’s title ended up being crowned best overall by judges, while the Jammer’s Choice Award, voted by participants, was given to the comically titled Just the Tip, a two-player game in which players assume the control of opposing narwhals who must fight by stabbing each other with the tips of their horns.
Blair is enthusiastic about the future of independent game publishing.
“Everybody buys games for their phones now, and there are way more opportunities for people to self-publish and put their games out there,” she said.
There are no monetary awards at Game Jam. The concept is similar to events such as NaNoWriMo, the annual writing incentive in November that encourages applicants to write an entire novel in one month. For Game Jam participants, the satisfaction of being able to successfully create a game from scratch is a reward in itself.
Additionally, the contest allows games to gain exposure from various technology companies. Both the programmers on Blair’s team have promising future jobs already lined up.
The competition is over, but teams are still allowed to improve their games. Blair said her team plans to add new power-ups, and once </3 has been fine-tuned enough, it will be available for download at games.lifemakesuslaugh.com.
