Jesse McIntosh, ASU Game Development Club president, stands next to Deion, the star of the club's latest game.Photo by Harmony Huskinson
On the third floor of Brickyard, nestled away from the whirring cars and cacophonous music of Mill Avenue, rests a room full of universes.
It might be a 2-D universe, where pastel platforms, clouds and enemies that shuffle side to side are the entirety of one’s obstacles.
Or it might depict a 3-D landscape, where guns are currency and soldiers perish every few seconds.
In this room of infinite possibility, 10 ASU students weave science, design and passion into video games with the quiet clicks and clacks of their keyboards.
The recently formed ASU Game Development Club provides a place for students to create their own video games, says club president and English Junior Jesse McIntosh.
“I found it to be a good opportunity to bring a lot of like-minded kids together,” McIntosh says. “We shared the common ground that we love video games, and I figured that if we all shared that common ground we can get a lot done.”
He started the club in the Spring 2012 semester after he noticed that ASU offered clubs for playing video games and designing software, but not for making video games.
The Game Development Club also functions as a platform for students to share their skills and collaborate — where they can work as a team, rather than a solitary and frustrated programmer or artist, McIntosh says.
He wants the club to attract people from a wide variety of interests and majors, he adds, because video games utilize all forms of media: writing, music, voice acting, art and (of course) programming.
McIntosh says he thinks video games offer great opportunity to students because gaming is a growing industry that can use an entire range of cultural skills.
“Video games are the newest media, and I have a feeling they are going to be more impactful than movies, books and music in the coming future because they incorporate everything, and then they put [the player] in that position,” McIntosh says.
Originally, McIntosh entered ASU as a computing informatics major, but then switched to English to follow his passion for writing, with a certificate in computer gaming.
“I just found myself frustrated by all the computer classes I was in. I was kind of like headbutting my keyboard every night. I figured I didn’t want to that for the rest of my life,” McIntosh says.
While most of the club members hope to develop their own ideas into video games, several of them are currently working on McIntosh’s arcade-style platformer: “Deion the Insiculous.”
Many club members are currently working on “Deion the Insiculous.”Photo by Harmony Huskinson
Deion — the blue, round, antennae-laden protagonist of this platformer world — is “insiculous,” a portmanteau of the words “ridiculous” and “insane.” Deion must save the world from a group of “baddies” (also known as bad guys) as he jumps from cloud to cloud, drops bombs on devil-horned foes, and falls to his death on an appropriately-placed sections of spikes.
An orange bandana attempts to restrain the forest of dreadlocks that burst from McIntosh’s scalp, partially concealing his banana-yellow shirt that displays the classic video game symbol of Mario riding Yoshi amidst a cluster of Japanese letters. He says they translate to “Super Mario” and “One cartridge, four players.”
“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to, you know, make, test and play video games for a living,” says McIntosh, who has been playing video games since he was three.
Now, with the help of the numerous talented club members, McIntosh can achieve his goal, add to his portfolio for the gaming industry, and establish ASU as a place for serious game development, he says.
Among this bundle of students collaborating on “Deion the Insiculous” and other club projects is the vice president and only girl in attendance at the club meetings, Janelle Wilke.
Wilke, an industrial design junior, focuses on creating “the visual things that draw [someone] in” to a video game. With sandy blonde hair tied in a knot behind her head, Wilke squints her azure eyes in concentration toward the well-lit screen of her MacBook Pro. She adjusts the colors and shapes of a flier for the ASU Game Development Club in InDesign.
“I fell in love with the idea of introducing people into these little worlds [and] seeing things as beautifully as I do,” Wilke says.
Wilke proudly displays a Mass Effect background on her computer and says that she has loved video games ever since she helped her “little friend boys beat
their video games” at age seven.
She adds that she offers her knowledge in design to anyone who needs a visual element like a logo or textures for models.
“This club is in its beginning stages. It’s very young,” Wilke says. “But at some point this might be a place where people are going to say ‘Whoa, these games came from that ASU club.’ It’s encouraging for students that they can actually make something.”
Wilke’s fellow vice president, Jordan Nguyen, a computer science junior, looks at games with an appreciation for their logic.
“Ever since I was little, I’ve always liked to do puzzles,” Nguyen says. “So when I got to video games, I was still in that puzzle-mindset.”
The characters’ jumping, walking through doors and gaining power-ups all fall within Nguyen’s job description when he assists with game development. He most recently assisted with programming for “Deion the Insiculous.”
The friendship between the three officers developed when McIntosh, Wilke and Nguyen met in an introductory video game development class last semester.
So far the club has mostly focused on simple games, but as the semester progresses, McIntosh says there may be side projects for more complex games.
Club Adviser Yoshihiro Kobayashi, a lecturer in the School of Computer Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, says he offers his knowledge of programming as a resource for members of the club, but mostly leaves club members to their ideas and creativity.
“I don’t push anything. It’s up to the student interest and it’s more flexible,” he says.
At the meeting for the game development club two weeks later, Communications Sophomore Josh Beedle says this is his second meeting, but he looks forward to adding his work on “Deion the Insiculous” to his portfolio.
Beedle will contribute to the video game by writing some of the storyline and figuring out a backstory for Deion.
“You don’t have to know a lot about programming in order to be a game developer,” Beedle says. “That’s something great about the club is that you gain that knowledge.”
McIntosh and Vice President Jordan Nguyen work intently at the computer, capitalizing on the opportunity this club gives them.Photo by Harmony Huskinson
The club is the closest any student can get to working as a team development group on games without being an intern for a gaming company.
This advantage can highlight ASU as a school for video game development because it is so new, Nguyen says: “There’s a lot of potential that’s there for the program.”
And McIntosh says the club will grow. He plans to join the larger community and collaborate with the International Game Development Association or local gaming development school The University of Advancing Technology.
“Anybody that’s willing to help out and push it forward, this is just a great place to be,” McIntosh says.
In fact, the Video Game Development Club will soon have created several great, virtual places to be — those creative universes where players will soon be leaping across spikes and vanquishing evil, one click at a time.
Reach the writer at hhuskins@asu.edu or via Twitter @hhuskins
