Hoosier Games developers stage first-ever testing night
It can be intimidating for the player, and maybe awkward for the observer, to stand behind people and intently watch them while they play a video game.
Sophomore Drake Rozenboom, a game designer and a member of the student group, Hoosier Games, found himself in that situation at the first-ever public video game testing session hosted by the group at Ballantine Hall Wednesday night.
But Roozenboom said the most interesting part of his job is thinking like a game designer instead of a gamer. Or, in his case, standing behind the chair instead of sitting in it.
“It’s seeing the whole process of what’s behind the screen,” Rozenboom said.
Hoosier Games Game Test Night
Taylor Hocutt, senior, president of Hoosier Games
So last semester, we had Hoosier Games just as normal with development cycles, but we never really had anything for play testing for members, and we had a survey at the end of the semester asking people what they’d like to see next semester, and one of the big ones was play testing.
People are shown playing games in a computer lab.
So we put together an effort to make sure there was an event specifically for play testing, and that’s kind of how this came around.
Joshua Smith, freshman, member of Hoosier Games
The way I heard about it was in a video game class, Video Game History, and I’m pursuing the game design major, well planning on pursuing it, and yeah I was just like yeah I’m gonna make games, so let’s get started right away.
People are shown playing games on both computers and phones.
I’ve been playing them all my life, and I love video games. I love everything about them, the stories, the gameplay, and I just want to get really involved, maybe get my name out there.
Hands are shown typing on a keyboard.
I was looking for a game design college, and game studies was one of the programs at IU, and then I came and visited and then just the environment got me sucked in.
The camera spans a flag that says “Hoosier Games.”
I think that having a Media School here, especially with a game design program, will not only give us more experienced members because there will be specific coursework for what it is that we do, but it’ll also attract more people who are interested in working on games to this school.
Produced by Bronson DeLeon
Hoosier Games is an IU student group of game designers, many in the game design program at The Media School but also those from the School of Informatics and Computing and School of Fine Arts, who meet regularly to work on projects and collaborate. They decided what they really needed was a pool of testers to try out the games that are in development, then apply testers’ feedback to the final development.
Rozenboom was one of several members of Hoosier Games who presented their projects at the video game testing session. The room was packed with people playing games and filling out forms about what was good, what was bad and what could change.
Roozenboom is a game designer, which means it’s his job to listen to that sort of feedback. He comes up with game mechanics, which are what a player can do and how those mechanics function to create the best experience for the player.
Rozenboom worked with a team to create a game called Sorasu, which means ‘reflect’ in Japanese. It’s a Japanese-themed, endless-runner, first-person action game in which the player has to dodge projectiles in a hallway with a katana to reach the final boss.
Except there isn’t a final boss — yet.
“The goal of the game is to reflect the projectiles to the end of the hallway, but currently in our build, there is no end,” said Rozenboom. “It’s just an endless hallway where you try to get the high score.”
The game is still in development, but Rozenboom said that, as a long-time gamer, developing video games for the first time opened his eyes to the complicated mechanics behind the pixels.
“It’s seeing how things are pieced together on a development level,” Rozenboom said. “How these large scale games you might play on a daily basis, or a weekly basis, or just once, come from so many different parts and merge so beautifully in a design.”
Rozenboom didn’t work alone. His team included programmers, who work on the game’s coding; artists who design the visuals; and sound engineers whose responsibility is to create the ambiance.
Ben Apter, a sophomore who served as the sound engineer for Sorasu, said that his job was to synchronize what a player sees, hears and feels.
“It’s an intense feeling, but you don’t want it to be distracting,” Apter said of the audio. “You want it to have a full effect so it can emphasize what’s going on in the game.”
Apter composed music reminiscent of feudal Japan, with elements of hybrid rock. Apter also was responsible for the sound effects of the game, which are recorded to match certain actions in the game, like a sword hitting an object.
“When you hit something, you get a sound and feedback,” Apter said. “You want that realism when you play the game. Every time you hit something with a sword, there should be a clank sound.”
Chris Ingerson, a graduate student studying game design, developed Text Quest. As its name suggests, it’s a text based adventure game, but it’s groundbreaking in that it’s 3-D.
“Historically, we’ve always had great artists, but we’ve not had enough of them,” Ingerson said. “So we’ve thought of making a game that’s just text so we wouldn’t have to rely on our artists.
“I was toying around with a game that was literally text, and originally it was a 2-D game. But I was out to lunch with a couple of coworkers talking about it, and eventually we started talking about a 3-D version of it.”
Text Quest is a first-person, text-based adventure. Everything in the world is comprised of text and colors rather than models created by artists.
“You see a tree, it’s spelled ‘tree,’” Ingerson said. “You see grass, it’s spelled ‘grass.’”
Text Quest requires that the user type in commands to perform actions. When a player walks up to a door, the player moves his cursor over the door and types “open.” But, if the door is locked, a text prompt will appear and inform the player that the door can’t be opened without a key.
“It’s very much inspired by MUDs or old school text games,” Ingerson said, referring to Multi User Domains, games of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. “You sorta get plopped into this world and you find your way around and find out what exactly is going to happen.”
Ingerson designed the game so that it wouldn’t give the player any direction as to what to do.
“There is a definitive end, but you have to explore on your own to figure out what it is,” Ingerson said. “Figure it out on your own, and explore the world while you’re doing it.”
Ingerson wants to allow the user to interact with every other part of the game.
“So if you ever get a fish, you can run up to every single object, smash it with a fish, and it will give you a completely unique output for it,” Ingerson said.
Before that can happen, Ingerson has to program every item to respond to any possible command a player could write. Ingerson said although not every item can be interacted with yet, some items still aren’t perfect. One player typed “knock” to knock on a door, and the game curiously said that it did not recognize that command.
“Interesting,” Ingerson said. “Another benefit of play testing is I find words I didn’t think of.”
Taylor Hocutt, a senior and the president of Hoosier Games, said that’s one of the most important reasons to have public testing sessions.
“Play testing and feedback is an invaluable part of game development,” Hocutt said. “It’s an extremely iterative process. You can’t just start with an idea and go from start to finish.”
Hocutt said that he thinks groups like Hoosier Games will have more testing sessions and more members with the implementation of the game design degree in the Media School.
“I think that having a media school here, especially with a game design program, will not only give us more experienced members, but will also attract people interested in the course work to this school,” Hocutt said.