SCAD Hong Kong Game Design and Development

Thomas, Lindsay, Melissa

Congratulations to Game Designers, Thomas, Lindsay, and Melissa for the successful completion of their MFA Candidacy Review.  Proud of you!

The Masters of Fine Arts is the top degree in the design profession and you guys are up to positively impact industry, society, and academia with your research, design philosophy and production work.

SCAD graduate student Lindsay Holloway at the Barcamp in Hong Kong, February 24th, presenting about designing games for girls.

Photo by Simon Newstead, Frenzoo (thank you for sharing Simon!)

Video Games Careers in Hong Kong?

By J.A. Rueda

December 2012

Why would highly-educated intelligent people choose to spent their careers making video games?

Video games are supposed to be a distraction, a waste of time, bad for you.  In the colloquial lingo, a video game is automatically associated with a negative force that compels people to be irresponsible, lazy, perhaps violent, and video games and the associated corporations are responsible for many of today’s global problems.  So some say.

While having such thoughts, people still play.  People play for passing the time alone (horse betting, card games such as solitaire) or in a group (Mahjong, basketball, poker), or as a personal challenge (golf), or for camaraderie at work (softball, touch rugby), or for competitive reasons (amateur or professional sports), or to stay sharp (crossword puzzles, Sudoku), or learning a new language (many young people in Hong Kong learn Japanese through video games), or for the love of art (playing the violin), or to try to earn money (casino style gambling), or to belong to a cool group (Halo on the Xbox), or because everyone else is playing (Minecraft), teasing friends, being playful during courtship (young and new couples are silly playful), or to teach skills to a child, or because they have a smart phone (Angry Birds), or because their Facebook friends are playing (Farmville), or to earn a price (promotion games in convenience stores), etcetera.  The list goes on and on.  There are hundreds of reasons to play. Even if we deny it know in front of our peers or children because games are supposed to be wasteful, at one point in our lives, we all played with cards, toys, stones, balls, and our friends. Albert Einstein once said that great things come from the necessary “waste of time”.  In other words, play is part of human development and a necessary activity.

If play is in big demand, there must be an opportunity to supply play professionally.  The core component of a game is play.  So, there should be an opportunity to make and sell games.  How compelling is the opportunity? How relevant it is to Hong Kong youth?

Continue on the PDF VideoGamesDec2012 (download)

This invited article follows the talk by Dr. Rueda on August 29 in which he introduced the medium of the video game from a business case perspective and as an academic subject leading to viable careers.  He provided an overview of the industry, history, key figures and drivers, government strategic initiatives from around the world, and case studies.

http://cancham.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-business-case-for-video-game-development-in-hong-kong-by-dr-jose-a-rueda/

Julian Tam visiting Hong Kong

ITGM315 (L-R): Andrew, Mariel, Nathan, Beatrice, Kaela, Kevin, Henry.

ITGM121 (L-R): Lindsay, Erick, Dave, AiFang, Cenga, Ian, Keiran.

ITGM755 (L-R): Lindsay, Nathan, Melissa, Henry

Watch out for these young game developers!

The ITGM Class, Fall 2012 at SCAD Hong Kong.  The Mini Game Developers Conference.

Thank you to our industry guests: Adam & Aime, Michael, Slimane, Martin & Alex, ATung, Roy, Po Chi, Martin, and Ingo.

Classes: ITGM351, ITGM315, ITGM121, ITGM719, ITGM755, ITGM760

SCAD Game Development students discuss with designers Martin and Alex from Phone Joy Solutions Limited (http://www.phonejoy.us), a start-up company specializing in console quality gameplay experience for mobile phones through innovative controller design and software.  Martin and Alex showcased early concepts of some of their products and also demonstrated compelling gameplay on the iPad and Galaxy devices with their controller for commercial games such as GTA III, Shad­ow­gun, Samurai II, Riptide, Sonic CD and Zeno­nia 4.  It is great to see innovation in this aspect of the industry.  Most studios are focusing on software and accepting somehow that it is ok to hinder the gameplay experience by our thumbs on the screen of mobile devices.  Martin and Alex don’t think we should compromise gameplay experience just because mobile phones are smaller than their console cousins.  I believe that their work opens interesting possibilities for designers and lowers the barriers for great gameplay designs on mobile phone to rival the console experience.

Masters class:

Melissa’s: http://gamingimperatrix.blogspot.HK/

Lindsay’s: http://lindsayhollowaythesis.tumblr.com/

Nathan’s: http://blog.scad.edu/nanash20/

Third year class:

Kevin’s:  http://kevinscwong.wordpress.com/

Henry’s: http://blog.scad.edu/honlau20/

Andrew’s: http://blog.scad.edu/awegen20/

Kaela’s: http://blog.scad.edu/ksmith47/

Mariel’s: http://blog.scad.edu/mthomp28/

Beatrice’s: http://bmalup20.blogspot.hk/

Second year class:

Keiran’s:  http://blog.scad.edu/klovet20/

Ian’s:  http://blog.scad.edu/icairn20/

Ai Fang’s:  http://blog.scad.edu/aiflim20/

Erick’s: http://blog.scad.edu/ewitti20/

Dave’s:  http://blog.scad.edu/dleung20/

Cenga’s:  http://blog.scad.edu/centse20/

This design is entertaining. Game designers take note. The environment is part of the experience.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/53_qvMQfvOE

Julian, Kevin, Henry, and Melissa made their games industry debut by introducing their iPad/iPhone games to a group of professionals.

Thank you to our industry guests Diana, Georgy, Raine, Kennis, Azure, Shuxian, Marco, John, Michael, Philip, Thomas, Leo, Ingo for all their feedback and support and for playing the students’ games!

A Mind-Blowing UI That Could Finally Make Group Work Intuitive

by John Pavlus, May 29, 2012

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665252/a-mind-blowing-ui-that-could-finally-make-group-work-intuitive

“THIS EXPERIMENTAL APP FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB COMBINES GESTURAL INTERFACES, AUGMENTED REALITY, COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACES, AND GENERAL SCI-FI AMAZINGNESS.”

This is a remarkable story about Caine Monroy, a 9-year-old game designer.  Notice three key game design principles: Simplicity, consistency, fairness.  Best intentions combined with a believable world that suspends disbelief in which the player understands why things are happening.

See the story by Mark Frauenfelder in boinggoing.net, April 9, 2012, and the short film by Nirvan Mullick, who discovered Caine:

http://boingboing.net/2012/04/09/9-year-olds-diy-cardboard-ar.html

Also see www.CainesArcade.com Caine seems to be raising funds for his education, perhaps he will study Game Design at SCAD Hong Kong!  Like his Facebook page See http://www.facebook.com/cainesarcade

SCAD HK students held an exchange session with games industry executives Michael and Gerry. Visiting from Austin TX, Michael is responsible for the platform for more than two thirds of iPhone games and Gerry had global responsibility for Call of Duty at Activision, among other career experiences.  The exchange of ideas about game design was memorable.  Henry, Julian, Kevin, and Melissa participated in the exchange and added Michael and Gerry to their network of contacts.

(click on the photo to enlarge it)

See the moving photo on Viddy.com

Michael Tanenbaum talked about his game design philosophy and how he launched his own studio.  He offers internships to SCAD students!

Remembering his college days, Michael played some games with students.

Thank you to Michelle Mak for coordinating.