HackHolyoke: November 2-3, 2018 – S. Hadley, MA
MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of HackHolyoke at Mt. Holyoke College. For more information, click here.
Brown-RISD Game Developers Guest Lecture Series: October 13, 2018 – Providence, RI
Join MassDiGI’s Monty Sharma for a talk entitled “Making Games: Business & Management.” For more information, please visit the Brown-RISD Game Developers here.
Different Games Conference: October 12-14, 2018 – Worcester, MA
MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of the 2018 Different Games Conference being held at WPI. For more information, click here.
BostonFIG Fest: September 29, 2018 – Cambridge, MA
Join us at BostonFIG Fest at MIT on September 29 and play our games! Our table is Z4. Register here.
MassDiGI Summer Innovation Program Open House: August 9, 2018 – Worcester, MA
Play our games! Join us for the annual SIP Open House. Free and open to all. Click here for more information and to register.
Worcester Games Demo Night: August 2, 2018 – Worcester, MA
Join us along with other local developers at The Grid for a demo night. Sponsored by Doorbell and FoodSquire. Click here to register.
Business After Hours: July 27, 2018 – Worcester, MA
Playtest our games at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Business After Hours at the Worcester Bravehearts. Click here to register.
Getting from student to game dev – 7/23/18
Getting from student to game dev
By Katherine Wang, RISD ’19
MassDiGI’s Summer Innovation Program introduces developers to challenges they’re less likely to bump into while working on a personal or individual project. Challenges like how to focus on a joint project without forgetting about individual development.
Sometimes you’ll find what’s right for your portfolio isn’t right for your game. Rather than build a game from the ground up as SIP does, the SIPX program focuses on specific aspects of a pre-existing project—like its UI/UX or a mini game mechanic. There are times where what needs to be done now just doesn’t fit with your past work or future goals. So rather than shoehorning in extraneous work in order create a collection of work with a cohesive voice, how do you strike a balance between finishing the present tasks and planning a future portfolio?
As an illustrator I’ve found that compiling your work into a narrative arc can showcase both what you’ve produced and your personal identity as a problem solver. While it differs from case to case, employers often want to see your thought process. What kind of peg are you and how can you fit in their team? If your work can hook them at a glance (sorry, programmers and audio devs), it’s not a bad idea to feed them a bit more info to delve into. It’s the same excitement as seeing unreleased concept art or rifling through a sketchbook: unadulterated thinking before all the what if’s and could be’s are cutout.
At the end of the day visuals in games are meant to convey an intangible idea. They can’t stand by themselves. By identifying the cornerstone of our work, that concept in our mind’s eye, we can show viewers what our constraints were, how successful our execution was, and whether this work will be a good fit for their project.
While everyone has a different method to their madness, it helps to start with the foundations. Showing sketches of inspirations or a quick quip about your research gives a familiar setting to help orient viewers. For a person who’s never seen your work, context is king. Maybe after that, proof of how your work moved the project along. Sure, you want to show your voice but did iterations of your art elucidate the concept your team was scratching their head over? Or did it waste time by making the conversation meander back and forth? What kind of deliverables can they expect out of you and why did you make this design choice or use that presentation? No employer wants to take a risk on inconsistent work.
But honestly in the end one of the best ways to get your name out in the game industry is to physically show up at events. I’ve been finding that after just a few days of studio tours (thanks, MassDiGI) and going to Boston game development talks I’m already seeing familiar faces thanks to the size of the industry. Of course, it was incredibly intimidating and still is! One way to prepare yourself is to start in a structured environment. Go to a talk related to your particular interest. Research who’s going to be there. Bring a friend along (please don’t forget about them). And when you’re comfortable ask the guest speakers questions that can eventually become discussions. Maybe after a while you’ll become a regular. Remember participation grades? It’s a bit like that. The more you contribute to the discussion, the more relevant information people are willing to give back. So, if putting yourself out there feels awkward or pointless at first, just remember the best part of the event hasn’t even begun yet.
Our own games – 7/19/18
Our own games
By Yukon Wainczak, Becker College ’20
For many of us, game development wasn’t just a career choice. We make games not because of the job, but because of our passion for games and the process of developing them. Because of this, many of us have built our own games during free time, either by ourselves or with a group of friends. This post is a collection of this year’s SIP interns and their past experiences developing their own games.
- Andrew Jones, UMass Amherst
Dungeon in a Bottle was the first game my friend and I made that got much attention. We made it for the Ludum Dare 38 game jam, where it ranked 37th overall, and it was given a short review by Sebastian Standke of Game Jam Curator.
Getting a positive response from people was really encouraging. It’s hard to make things that are important to you while also not getting discouraged from dreaming too big. The fact that some people like our brightly colored, claustrophobic, hyper-difficult platformer really helped us to keep working.
It’s important to remember that if you yourself find the game you’re making fun, then someone else will, too. Dungeon in a Bottle isn’t super complicated, and it isn’t super ambitious, but it is fun. So if someone else thinks so, too, then I couldn’t possibly ask for more.
- Chloe Tibets, Becker College
A game where you build levels to challenge your friends, S W I T C H was developed at the IGDA: Becker 48-hour game jam my freshman year. It was later posted on itch.io and Newgrounds for people to play with their friends. It had a pretty solid reception, even getting front paged on Newgrounds. Yukon and I teamed up to create this game, with him as a programmer and designer and myself as art and design. This game feels like my true start in game development, being the first game I’ve ever had a hand in making. It really helped me to start understanding the core of game design and development, and in turn, my passion for it.
- Dain Woods, Brown University
Jailbreak is a 1v1 online prison escape game where one player tries to escape from jail without being caught by the other player. Jailbreak began as a project with one of the teams in Brown RISD Game Developers. Some members of that team kept working through the summer and beyond as members of Hi I’m Alec Games – founded by Dain Woods. Jailbreak is currently nearing 2 years in development and anticipating a release to Steam in the coming months.
- Heriberto Calderon, Becker College
Finite was created on Train Jam 2018, a 74 hour game jam on a train to GDC. I was a 3D artist, level designer and producer on the team. On the way to Chicago, one day before the event, I networked with people through the Train Jam Discord and made a team. I recruited the team at the Chicago station, we all clicked as soon as we met. We brainstormed ideas at the train station and started development as soon as we left. It was a beautiful, stinky, and challenging voyage to GDC. Unfortunately for me, I missed my flight to Chicago for Train Jam, so I had to take a train, to the train. Instead of Train Jam being 52 hours, it ended up being 74+ hours for me.
- Kate Olguin, WPI
This is Happy Farm Time. It’s a story-based game where you disobey the directions of a farmer, and as a result the game keeps “crashing” (intentionally) and different parts of the game start glitching out. I made it by myself over the course of 3 weeks in Unity. It was easily the most organized I’d been in making an independent project (I made an asset list and everything) and I learned a lot while making it. Also, since I did it solo, I felt like afterwards I was better able to understand how the different parts of game development fit together. I’m very happy with it since it’s one of the most polished games I’ve ever made, and I was able to create a solid plan and stick to it.
- Matt Surka, Penn
HEARtREAD straddled an important fault line in my life. Before it, I was working a full-time job unrelated to games, and I knew nothing about Unity or programming. After, I was spending most of every week self-teaching in game development, plotting my eventual career change and plunge into engineering school. I’m forever grateful to the project, its incredible team, and everyone who played it. It was a lifegiving experience that encourages me to keep going even today.
- Yukon Wainczak, Becker College
I built iii in during Ludum Dare 38, a weekend long game jam with the theme “Small World”. iii placed 14th place in the jam, which was the first time I have ever done so well. After the jam, I spent a few weeks polishing up the game, eventually releasing a massive patch. Ever since then iii has been featured on several gaming websites and is still being downloaded today. iii was the first of my games that I deem a success, and it made me fall in love with game development all over again.
Team work makes the dream work – 7/13/18
Team work makes the dream work
By Aaron Kang, Swarthmore College ’19
We’re currently eight weeks into SIP, and it’s kind of scary to think how quickly time has passed. Though we had many challenges to overcome during our time in SIP, we were also able to accomplish so much as a team.
Working as a team is actually harder said than done, especially if it’s with five other people you had never met before. When Melody Cheng, Xijie Guo, Chloe Tibets, Tolga Sen, Leo Bunyea, Maxime Gautier and I first came together, all of us were pretty excited about making a game and wanted to make sure that everyone would have a good time during the summer. However, these first few weeks were essentially our honeymoon phase, when we saw each other through rose-colored glasses. Because our team consists people from six different institutions (RISD, Mt. Holyoke, Becker, UMass Boston, WPI, Berklee and Swarthmore, of course), we would inevitably bring different ideologies on how a game should be produced. At the same time, people from different disciplines (i.e. programming, art, music) had to learn to communicate with each other and understand the constraints they had to work under. With all these differences in perspectives and communication, it was inevitable that we would eventually delve into disagreements on how the game should be created. I would be lying if I were to say everything was sunshine and rainbows.
However, having disagreements over the game isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just goes to show that we all want what’s best for the game, but approach it in different ways. Part of working as a team is understanding that conflicts are a fact of life and that they won’t go away any time soon. The best of dealing with these issues is to reach out and communicate, and find compromises so that everyone’s voices can be clearly heard. When everyone is on the same page, we are able to accomplish so much more than when we work on our own.
Being a part of SIP is a journey in itself, as it involves meeting new people and understand how different facets of game development feeds into the project. At the same time, SIP allows us to directly interact with the players and gives us insight on how media can be translated from creator to audience. Though making games is not the easiest task to do, having an opportunity to create a game for other people is a gift in itself.
