Student-led multimedia production company at UAT brings together innovation, creativity and a group of nerds. BunchOfNerds (BON) was created as a club for students to create projects and network.

V Greffin, game design major and CEO of BunchOfNerds, started the club with the desire to create friendships with artists and programmers and to collaborate on small projects. The club soon morphed into a large team concentrating on one big project at a time. Executive team V, Bailey Neilson, Ricardo Martinez, Sabrina Peterson and Abby Palmer soon turned the club into a company.

During a phone call between V and their mom, V’s mom said, “you’ll figure out something, you’re all just a bunch of nerds.” The name stuck and the company grew from there. Company culture at BON is focused on having fun. In the future, the executive team hopes for the company to be self-sustaining, so that the creators can focus on creating.

Originally the company was just focused on game design, then a friend asked V, “what if I don’t want to work on video games, can I still join BunchOfNerds?” It was agreed to expand the company to a multi-media production studio after that. BON produces any form of entertainment media the members are interested in creating—the possibilities are endless.

Due to demand, BON is now encompassing eight departments and growing. Departments include The Burn Pile, Campfire Comics, FireTape, Firelight Libraries, Play With Fire, Hearthfire Tabletop, Key Flames and SomethingExtravagant.

One of the more difficult aspects the executives faced was the steep learning curve required when creating a company. Many hours were poured into research, trial and error, sales, LLC licensure, trademarking, trade naming, etc. On top of the legal aspects, getting the word out about BON proved to be another challenge.

Not only is BunchOfNerds on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), but they’re also friendly faces at the Founder’s Hall yard sale. They spread the word by talking to everyone that comes their way and selling branded sunglasses. “In general, we all wear our BunchOfNerds merchandise,” says Bailey, “that way it’s just there and people ask about it.”

During the process, UAT faculty and staff, such as Scott Beemer, Matthew Marquit, Dapzury Valenzuela and Derric Clark, have been more than willing to give pointers and business advice.

Baily, the company accountant, distinguishes classes such as entrepreneurship to marketship, project management and accounting as classes that have helped her develop much of what BON is accomplishing. On the creative side, Ricardo and V thank their game design courses, which taught scrum and agile learning. These universal skills help the executive team lead the company, monitor progress and stay accountable with release schedules.

BON holds weekly meetings every Saturday at noon. Here, team leads give updates on projects in the works and any issues that arise. “I’m frequently messaging people, like hey we’re looking to post something on social media, do you have any screenshots?” says V, “We’re constantly getting updates. When I get bored, I’ll go through our drive, through all the sig files, and see what’s new and what’s been added and read over documentation.”

With an active team of 17, BON is currently running five projects. “We’re also using Pack and Plan as a development stage, so that we know what’s in process, what’s finished and we go over it,” notes Ricardo, “If it still needs to be done, we can bring it back to in process, otherwise, it needs something else finished and we move on from there.”

The executive team joined BON for different reasons. For Baily, she was inspired by her business owning mother, “I love the opportunities that she’s had as a business owner and I want that for myself. I love the culture that UAT has. Plus, this BunchOfNerds was such a cool club in my eyes,” states Bailey, “Once V had proposed making it a business, I knew I wanted to be a part of it.”

Ricardo has always wanted create games that give others the same entertainment he enjoyed from games when he was younger, which has led him down the game design path. Similarly, V enjoys making and creating things.

Executive Team:

Bailey Neilson, Web Design, Business Technology
V Greffin, Game Design
Ricardo Martinez, Game Programming, Robotics and Embedded Systems
Sabrina Peterson
Abby Palmer

Other members:
Jenn Walbaum
Chloe Main
Nancy Paltz
Natalie Johnson
Sydney Brown
Kim Martin
Lily Valles
James Cortezano
Josue Espinoza
Victoria Cleere
Allison Akins
Jordan Brown
Alex Bautista
Maddie Johnson
Rheana Salgado
Joey Chilton
Isabelle Main

What does financial literacy mean? You see articles on high schools graduating students who know math and how to read and write, but they are lacking fundamental life skills, including financial literacy. When many young adults move out, they still don’t know how to budget, pay bills or get insurance.

Professor Derric Clark brought financial literacy to UAT in partnership with Junior Achievement of Arizona. Students were tasked with creating a financial literacy education game for school-aged students with the goal of every school in the Valley having access to this game. The game will be integrated into classrooms to support the financial literacy curriculum schools are teaching.

The team started as a small group of six, but quickly grew to 30 members. After understanding the concept, the group created the game’s identity, theme and style of play.

When deciding the game style, the team addressed restraining forces and the audience. The game needed to work on existing public-school equipment with curriculum approachable for all levels of learners. The team created a Chromebook-compatible game with 200 polies max for every scene. Derric recommended games such as Graveyard Keep and Farmville, which influenced the cartoon-style.

“We wanted to ensure that even though we were trying to put so much educational information into this, it was actually going to be appealing to those playing it, and that it was going to be fun,” says Kieli Adkins.

Tycoonizing the gameplay, having the play constantly manage resources, created the core mechanics. This idea then stemmed many systems mapped by the designers.

The education element was incorporated after the platform was established. After embracing the tycoon aspect, the team needed to decide the type of systems that worked best with educational material. This landed them on interactive gameplay, that plays out as a one-shot take. The play isn’t removed from the experience, which results in the gameplay players as a quest system that delivers education.

To further that, the team implemented an event system within the gameplay for educational moments through minigames. This resulted in all actions being based on visual cues and UI as clicking was solely used for menus and confirmation. Lighting, highlighting objects, particles and player feedback where included in the visual cues. The game also allows for customization, such as customizing the character. C# coding, Unity 2019 and Rider were used to write the game’s code.

Mimicking a slice of life simulator, the minigames are similar to jobs. To earn a paycheck, players must accomplish tasks and allocate resources. The practical utilization of tutorials is used here.

These include maneuvering through a bank account, and learning to budget, pay bills and get insurance.

While this game is meant for K-12 classrooms, it can be played by anyone who wants to learn about finances. And the players aren’t the only learners, the team noted that creating this game was a crash course in finances for them as well, “it’s truly amazing how much you may not know about life skills, every person on this project has learned something throughout this game,” says Justine Grauel.

“My favorite day is sitting down and telling everybody, okay here is a mortgage, here is how you do this. Cause I’ve done it, I had to go through it, but my first time I had no idea what I was doing,” says Derric Clark, “I just had to figure it out as I was doing it because no one ever taught me either.”

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it’s taken an entire team of UAT students working together to create a much needed, practical educational tool for school kids.

See what our students are working on.

Professor and Lead: Derric Clark

Project Lead: Tyler Ann Cook, MS Game Production and Management, Game Design

Project Manager and Project Lead: Justine Grauel, Virtual Reality, Game Art and Animation

Art Leads:

Jonathan Campbell, Game Design, Game Art and Animation

Kieli Adkins, Game Art and Animation, Game Programming

Andrew Van Winkle, Game Art and Animation

Programming Leads:

Miguel Hernandez, Advancing Computer Science, Virtual Reality, Game Design

Ethan Page, Game Programming

Design Leads:

Tyler King, Game Design

Kyle Davis, Game Design

Alex Schlegel, Game Design

Artists:

Nick Hodes, Game Design, Game Art and Animation

Kenneth Frueh, Game Design

Ruth Luis, Game Art and Animation

Naomi Law-Komegay, Game Design, Game Art and Animation

Ian Favreau, Game Art and Animation

RaLen Watson-Davis, Game Art and Animation

David Schafers, Game Art and Animation

Addison Buettner, Game Design

Sidney McKnight, Game Art and Animation

Justan Griffin-McClinton, Game Design

Jeff Watanabe, Game Art and Animation

James Goddard, Game Art and Animation, Game Programming

Jake Rigsby, Game Design

Daniel McWhorter, Game Art and Animation

Programmers:

Abdulai Sallah, Game Programming

Nathan Scott, Game Programming

James Fisher, Game Programming

Sean Murphy, Game Design

Amanda Kimball, Advancing Computer Science

Designers:

Peter Tibbals, Game Design

Nicholas La Macchia, Game Programming

Tousean Woodard, Game Design

John Kvassey, Game Design, Game Programming

Alex Pabon, Game Design

Business Technology:

Renee Grauberger, Business Technology

Did you know UAT has their own version of Shark Tank, coined Tech Tank, where students pitch their hypothetical business ideas to a panel of real-world potential investors, business owners and entrepreneurs. The goal of Tech Tank is to see who can give the best pitch, arrive the most prepared and encourage the panel to invest in their idea. 

This year, Tech Tank saw four projects from three different BUS200 classes. “As the creator of this event, I was very happy with the presentations and the preparedness of the students’ presenting,” remarks Dr. Mark Smith, “They held their own, answered tough questions and took the criticisms well under pressure.”

Gold Award Winner—Ace of Spades presented by Christopher Hernke, Artificial Intelligence

From Professor Cimarossa’s class came Ace of Spades. The project is an entertainment-based restaurant and bar with the main selling point being a POS system built off hard plastic playing cards that can track the tabs of the customers. Restaurant guests can order and pay from the POS kiosk systems and set limits for bill size with the individually linked cards. 

Silver Award Winner—Demeter’s Watch presented by Marissa Williams, Game Art & Animation

From Professor Valenzuela’s class came Demeter’s Watch. The project is a home gardening sensor that tracks plants’ health through an application. This sensor notifies the plant parent when their plants need sunlight, soil, water, etc.

Bronze Award Winner—Eyes Breaker presented by Marc Benson, Advancing Computer Science

From Professor Vita-More’s class came Eyes Breaker. The project is a social interaction application that helps socially anxious and introverted people find others in close proximity who are looking for conversation. The app prompts the user with common interest points and offers suggestions on how to "break the ice" and start a conversation. 

See more innovation projects!

Rebecca Levasseur

Hometown: Fort Washington, Maryland

Major: Digital Video

Rebecca remembers being six and sitting in her elementary school’s computer lab exploring all the features of the old Macintosh computers. Her fascination with computers matured into playing around with video editing for school assignments, coding activities and picture editing for fun in high school. She’s always been interested in technology.

Rebecca changed her major to Digital Video after originally attending UAT for Network Security. Since she has more experience in the video field and some close friends in the Digital Video major, the transition happened naturally. 

Ultimately, Rebecca just wants to edit videos. She loves creating with video editing software and discovering all the things you can make. Rebecca loves UAT for its smaller campus, which promotes a close-knit family atmosphere amongst faculty and students.

When she’s not studying or doing homework, Rebecca likes to hang out with friends and play games, go to the mall, hike and joyride BIRD scooters. Inspired by her brother, parents and friends, Rebecca wouldn’t be here without their support and advice in times of doubt. After graduating from UAT, Rebecca would like to edit videos as a career. 

David Austad

Hometown: Gilbert, AZ

Major: Network Security

David decided he wanted to increase his knowledge after working for three years at a third-party IT company. With many of his clients working in the medical industry, he felt he could better meet their need by gaining additional skills. This led him to pursue a degree in network security.

David remembers networking PCs together during gaming LAN parties and building his first PC as a teenager. He’s been interested and influenced by tech from a young age. Since many state universities didn't offer degrees that specifically addressed the field of work he was interested in, he found UAT and decided to attend. UAT’s atmosphere felt like home to David, a place where he could do the things he loved. UAT’s innovative spirit has rubbed off on David.

David’s favorite hobby is gaming—all sorts of gaming, including board games, video games, card games and anything that challenges him to use tactics and intellect to achieve victory. He also enjoys hiking with Jennifer, his wife.

Through the years, David was especially inspired by his great grandfather. At a young age, David had the privilege of spending time with his great grandfather at his Northern Arizona cattle ranch. At the ranch, David learned that any task worth completing is worth completing well, the value of hard work, and to never give up on any dream.

Aubrey “Kim” Martin

Hometown: Keyesport, Illinois

Major: Game Art and Animation

Kim loves seeing the possibilities of what something can looked like in a TV show, animation, movie or even a comic. She’s always been interested in character design and development, so she chose to study Game Art and Animation to become a character concept artist. 

After her junior year of high school, Kim received a call from one of her close friends, who told her that UAT offered both of the majors they wanted to study. They soon visited UAT for a campus tour. “The moment I walked into the main building was the moment I decided I was going to attend UAT,” remarks Kim, “nobody was going to tell me otherwise.”

Kim enjoys hobbies such as digital and traditional drawing, playing video games, creating 2-D animations and playing piano. 

Since attending UAT, Kim discovered her love for 2-D animation and has gained many new skills, such as developing 3-D modeling in 3DS Max and Autodesk Maya and creating vector and pixel art and animations for functional video games. She has also taken a position as a character artist at the student-run company BunchOfNerds. Most importantly, she’s gained strong motivation, new friends and a true happiness at UAT. 

Interested in meeting more UAT freshmen? Read our last issue of Geek411!

Ricky Martinez knows how to hustle. As an Excel Leader and Student Mentor, Ricky is a familiar face to all on the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) campus. He’s also active in clubs, is double-majoring in Game Programming and Robotics and Embedded Systems and works in the UAT Cafe.

From a young age, Ricky was determined to be a game designer. Growing up gaming on a PlayStation, Ricky fondly remembers playing videogames with his dad, laughing a lot and discovering new worlds and experiencing adventures through videogames. These memories inspired him to create games to give players a similar experience and the same entertainment that Ricky had as a kid.

The UAT community quickly drew Ricky in. “When I first came here for my UAT Experience, I met people that I was able to actually have conversations with,” explains Ricky, “I remember calling my mom the day after and telling her that I found my people.”

Ricky also takes advantage of the resources UAT offers to students. Our campus system’s technology capabilities are built on enterprise server architecture—our datacenter contains more than 100 servers dedicated to production and student use!

You can often find Ricky in the Robotics Lab and Maker’s Lab. Our Maker’s Lab is equipped with the latest 3D printers, maker bots, CNC cutters and the software and knowledge guidance that students need to bring innovative ideas to life. Designed to foster creativity and challenge student innovators with a 24/7 environment, the Maker’s Lab is for those like Ricky, who seek to lead the new industrial revolution driven by the convergence of advancing technologies.

Ricky’s advice for new students is to learn time management and to reach out to someone if you’re struggling, so that they can give you the help you need.

Check out the UAT community.

Hi, again! Happy to be back to writing gaming blogs for all of you guys! This time around, I’m going to be talking about a game that I just rediscovered my love for - Don’t Starve! More specifically, Don’t Starve Together - the multiplayer sequel to the original game. 

Back when I was in high school, I played this game all the time. Given, I was pretty horrible at it (and, honestly, I still am), but I always found myself having fun even when I failed. I loved building up my first base, making friends with all the pigs, and ultimately having both ripped away from me suddenly by hounds and Deerclops (Okay, maybe not so much the last part, but it did give me an adrenaline rush to keep trying).

Even as they added more content to the game and made it harder to survive, I still always found myself enjoying the game. With the inclusion of insanity in The Insanity! Update, new seasons in the Reign of Giants DLC, and a whole ton of other content that was added in, I found it harder to survive. But, in the end, despite the constantly increasing difficulty, I still kept on coming back and having fun.

But then how did Klei make it to where the game was this fun? What keeps bringing people in?

Our first stop in figuring this out would be the character select screen. Don’t Starve has grown a lot over the years, creating characters that have provided different things to the player. However, we are going to go to the simpler time of the Don’t Starve early access beta, where there were only 5 characters to use.

Each character provided something new that the player could use, but none of them were better than each other. This provided an asymmetrical dynamic within Don’t Starve, which allowed for players to pick any character they want and have experiences for each playthrough, while still being able to have access to a lot, if not all, of the same opportunities in each world.
On that note, to understand how Klei made this character choice matter, we would have to look at how they designed each character.

Take, for example, Wilson, the first character that the player could choose. During the beta of Don’t Starve, he was the only person who could have grown a beard, which made it easier for the player to keep warm and not freeze to death when the in-game season changed to winter.

In the case of Willow, she was the only person who had an infinite lighter, which allowed her to ward off Charlie - an enemy in the game that would strike the player if they stood in darkness for too long.

For Wolfgang, he was the only person who could change his max stats, allowing him to increase his health and strength to survive longer. Wickerbottom had access to books that allowed her to activate in-game events ( plant growth, Lightning, etc) and a higher tier of knowledge, which allowed her to get quicker access to stronger survival tools.
Lastly, for Wendy, she could summon her ghost sister, which attacked enemies for her automatically.

While each character did something great or sometimes better than other characters, it was not like a character was completely stronger than the last. After all, it’s not like Wolfgang can grow a beard like Wilson, and it’s not like Willow has instant access to stronger weapons. Outside of Wilson - the beginner character of the game-each character had their downfall that made the playing field equal in some way. For example, Willow would light fires at her feet when it gets too dark, which would cause the structures of the surrounding areas and items to catch on fire and be destroyed. Wolfgang would need to eat a lot of food to boost his stats, thus making resources scarce in the world. Wickerbottom could not sleep, locking her away from gaining health via sleeping items. Lastly, Wendy had lower health and strength, making survival in fights harder to pull off.

Another thing to consider would be those opportunities that I mentioned beforehand. A world in Don’t Starve has a lot of items that the player can create, alongside a lot of natural events that the player could benefit from. A character a person plays as does not affect the availability of either of those things. Whether you play as Wilson or Wendy, you will still have access to some items that can keep you warm during the winter. And whether you play Wolfgang or Willow, you will still have access to some form of a light source to ward off the darkness. If anything, the availability of an item or event would be based around the world generation settings, which I will speak about later.

Overall, the choice between characters was based around preference and wanting to try something new in the game. Anyone could play any character and have an equal chance of surviving or failing within the game.

That was all within the beta, however. Again, we had more characters added to the game, with each providing their pros and con. As of right now, we have a total of 22 unique playable characters. We have a lot of other content and scenarios that allow for each character's ability to shine, while still maintaining that asymmetry that makes these characters interesting and fun to use.

On a side note, the asymmetry seen within beta Don’t Starve and current-day Don’t Starve/Don’t Starve Together is completely different. While the choice of characters was based on preference beforehand, it is now sometimes based on preference, skill, or both. This started to happen around the time Wes was introduced to the game. Wes was designed solely around providing a challenge for the player, having little to no advantages ( unless you consider him starting with a Pile o’ Balloons item as an advantage, despite how it can quickly drain sanity and having a low damage output), having weaker damage output and being able to starve faster than the rest of the cast.

While future characters were not as difficult/skill driven to use, a lot of them had similar designs applied to them. We currently have a few characters - Wigfrid, Warly, and Wurt- designed in a way that locks them out from eating certain foods, forcing the player to find new means of keeping each character's hunger up while also managing their other downfalls. However, if the player can find ways to overcome these challenges, then a lot of benefits would naturally come to them. For example, if Warly could get a decent farm at their base and consistent food supply, and if they can make a variety of filling foods for themselves, then they can easily keep their hunger up to comfortable levels while also creating stat-boosting foods for the rest of the team ( if playing Don’t Starve Together). Wigfrid can use her strong armour to easily hunt down enemies that provide a lot of meat, which not only makes hunting/farming easier but also makes her a good fighter for the harder bosses in the game, Lastly, in the case of Wurt, she can save the fish that she can not eat for the spawning of a Merm king, which automatically boosts the stats of Wurt and any other Merms in the world.

In other words, the newer, harder characters, have a lot more risks compared to other characters, and some items are locked away from them in some way. However, they also have huge rewards to make overcoming these challenges worthwhile, thus maintaining the asymmetry, but for mostly skilled players.

However, while the asymmetry gets maintained with each individual character, team combos do break that. In the case of team combos, a Warly, with his stat increasing foods, and a Wolfgang, with his high damage output, completely makes any other team combo irrelevant, as the Wolfgang can now dispatch enemies quickly without taking a lot of damage. No other team in the game will ever match the damage output that this team provides. I do have a problem with that as that does make the game somewhat unbalanced, but it’s not like Don’t Starve is competitive in any way. It’ll be multiple players working together, so, maybe, having the choice of creating such an overpowered team might be okay if everyone agrees with it. Plus, again, it’s all up to preference; players do not have to play these extremely strong teams if they are not interested.

Overall, I believe that one of the reasons for Don’t Starve being fun is due to the ability of the player to choose different characters that can fit their playstyle. Another reason would be due to how these characters provide unique challenges that force the player to find unique solutions, which creates a lot of room for creativeness and open-ended gameplay. Lastly, the game is fun due to how there isn’t a wrong answer when it comes to these characters, providing differing experiences that are no worse than the last unless it is simply something that the given player does not like.

Click here for information on our degrees in Game Studies or schedule a virtual tour with me in Discord.

Welcome back to another entry within this series. Let’s just jump right into it. As with any form of game development, we would need documentation to keep track of concepts, current work in progress, what is needed, etc. At the moment, you already created a piece of documentation - the papermap. This will help you envision your project and give you a reference for how you want your map to look like in the end. However, we need more. Now, we have to create the design document: This document is one of the most important things that you would have for your map. It outlines the theme of the map, the assets that the map will use, and an idea on how the map will be completed. Due to the flexibility of the design document and the project at hand, you can say that you can not fully complete a design document. However, to get a document that is useful for development, you should flesh out the following pieces of it.

1. Number of Players (subjective): The intended amount of people that can play on this map at a single given time.
2. Engine Being Used: It is the engine that you will be doing most of your production on.
3. Concept: What you are trying to aim for with the map and what you want the player to experience.
4. Objective: The overall goal that the player will need to achieve to beat the map. There can be multiple objectives, but make sure to make the main objective as fleshed out as possible. See how the other objectives help or lead the player in beating the main objectives.
   
5. Tools used within the level: Basically, what items and interactables that are available within the entirety of the map.
   
6. Asset List: The items that you, as the developer, would need to create to build the entirety of the map. When we say assets, we mean things such as textures, whiteboxes, particles, items, character/enemy models, etc. Think of it like this - every individual piece that makes up the physical level is an asset.
7. Function List: Scripts or any sort of code that you will be making
8. Map Size: Just how big your map will be in the possible final build. Try to use some sort of unit of measurement that is easy for you to use as a reference while sculpting out the map within the editor.
9. Story Placement: Some games do have some sort of single-player mode or story mode that you can play through. The maps that you will play through will change in some way during different parts of the story. Some assets might be present/not present during certain parts and some mechanics might be present within only certain parts of that story as well. If you want your map to make sense within the context of the games' story/if you are trying to develop a map for the main campaign, you have to indicate where this map will appear within the main story. Make sure to use visuals from previously created maps to capture how that map should look at that part of the story. Doing all of this helps make your map much more consistent and believable to the player, which helps with the immersion.
10. Audio Effects List: Similar to the Asset and Function Lists - you’re just going to outline what kind of sounds that will be present on your map, where those sounds will be played, and under what circumstances.
    
11. Walkthrough: A step by step instructional on how to 100% complete your map ( get all the collectibles, reach certain parts of the stage, defeating certain enemies, etc). While you can publish the walkthrough and allow players to follow it to help them get through the map, this is more so for you, as the developer, to use as a reference for understanding the flow of your map and where certain events will occur. It also will help in the creation of your pacing chart, which you will use in tandem with the walkthrough section of your documentation to balance out your map so that it makes sense gameplay-wise.
12. Pacing chart: The pacing chart is a numeric chart that quantifies how hard a part of a map is compared to the other parts. As said before, this would be used in tandem with the walkthrough section of your map so that you can go back and balance the gameplay so that some parts are not too hard or too easy. I feel like the pacing of the map should grow in the shape of a hill - difficulty starts very low, but gradually gets harder as time goes on. It will then reach an apex - or the highest difficulty of the map - and then it will start declining in difficulty until it is easy again. This helps build up the player so that they can grow and be prepared for the challenges that they face.
13. Milestone log: This log helps with separating the tasks that need to be completed before a certain date. It helps with keeping everyone on track, and ensuring that a product is made by a certain date. This is not necessary if you are an independent developer just doing this for fun or on his or her own time, but it is vital when you are in a professional setting and trying to get a product out to a stakeholder. To create a milestone log, create tasks that will help you develop pieces of your map. Then create a set of time windows ( It could be a week, a month, or a year. But make sure you get solid dates down for these time windows), and then place these tasks into those specific windows. If it seems like these tasks are too much to handle within a window or if a task needs to be completed before another task can be completed, organize them in another window. You’re just creating a list of things to do, and giving yourself a deadline to complete them all.

If you want an idea on how a design document should look, check out the design document that I made for my Portal 2 map.

If you want an idea on how a pacing map should look, check out the pacing map for my portal 2 map as well!

That’s pretty much it for this week! Next week, we’re going to jump straight into Hammer and start developing something great. Until then, be well!

UAT offers the following Gaming Degrees; Game Art and Animation, Game Design, Game Production and Game Programming

Playing online video games is like running through a minefield of curse words. Watch Your Language is a tool kit trying to make the gaming experience more family friendly.

This Student Innovation Project (SIP), created by duo Rocky Vargas and Michael Shepherd, monitors what players are saying and flags inappropriate words. Rocky explains, “Our innovation claim is that gameplay is intensified by turning to foul language gamers use into a mechanic for punishment.”

There isn’t anything for gaming that uses speech recognition this way. If Watch Your Language detects vulgar words, alarms sound and the monitor will display the word. This mechanic is meant to monitor in real-time and can be universally used because there is a coded element that can be written for any word.

Because of the code, this technology can expand into more than just the gaming industry. Software and other technologies written in code can apply Watch Your Language if it’s compatible with a microphone.

Rocky wrote the original code to detect specific words and activated the streaming portion of this SIP. Michael polished the code and hooked it all up.

Do you want to drive the future of games? Check out UAT’s Game Programming degree.

Looters of the Arcane is a post-modern survival horror game where players travel to past eras to find mysterious objects. With the use of a Time Sphere, players can collect these objects for the antiquities company they currently work for in the distant future.

The purpose of the game is to find the arcane objects and sell them to the highest bidder. Because the lost objects are things that shaped the current world, the game has a surreal effect.

Creator Regis Jerry says this game is an “environment with a personality.” Also known as True PVE, this sets the game apart from other PVE games and gives it an innovative factor. The game’s AI gives the player a completely immersive experience through environmental challenges thrown at the player.

As a player levels up, the environment becomes more difficult to beat. This sense of differing personalities gives the player the ability to use the environment or let it hinder them. Visit places like Ancient Egypt, The Asylum, Ancient Greece and Feudal Japan.

Players can use guns and crosses found within the different environments to fight off elements of the environment that is trying to kill them.

You can play Looters of the Arcane on Steam for free.

Are you interested in the gaming industry? UAT offers degrees in Game Design, Game Programming and Game Art and Animation.

University of Advancing Technology (UAT) students love unwinding with video games after a long day of classes and studying. Students thrive when they have a healthy school-life balance and playing cult classic video games is one way they relax while out of class.

Find your friends at UAT and chill out while playing the hottest, or longest running, video games. UAT is chock full of gamers, on and offline, physical and digital, with favorites like League of Legends, Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls.

Check out our Game Studies degrees!

University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is known for innovation—students take that to heart and are even inspired to rearrange their dorm rooms because of it. Ross Hall, Kevin Albregard, Darren Palermo and Andrew Weisenberger are a group of suitemates who decided to convert their connected bedroom suite into a sleeping room and a game room.

They moved all four desks into one room and the beds into the other room to create a paramount lounge and gaming space. The game room is filled with gaming systems and computers, making it the ultimate gaming man cave. They’ve set up an unmatched gaming experience that everyone on their floor wants to be a part of.

Interested in a future with gaming? UAT offers degrees in Game Programming, Game Design and Game Art and Animation.

For many years, game developers have run into the same problem over and over again: How do we explain our game without boring the player to death? Nobody wants to read a manual on how to play your game and nobody wants to play a 30 minute tutorial. A good game should be able to teach you how to play the game naturally in a fun and engaging way. This idea of how you teach the mechanics of your game is called conveyance and it’s a big part of what separates a mediocre game from a good one!

In classic video games, conveyance was much easier than the games of today. With games on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the controls were limited to the hardware, only having access to a 4-directional d-pad, start, select, A, and B. Because of these limitations as well as the far simpler game mechanics of that era, they often didn’t require tutorials to teach the player how to play. You would just start the game and figure out how to play. A game like Super Mario Bros. could just drop you into level 1-1 and let you push buttons until you figured it out. Today, however, controllers are much more complicated and the mechanics of games have expanded heavily and because of that, this method doesn’t really work anymore.

Players need to have an idea of not only how to control your game, but the mechanics that drive your game. A great example of how to do this is Portal. In Portal, the mechanics of the game are unlike any other and could be extremely overwhelming to a new player. To address this, as well as teaching you in a creative, story-driven way, the game has the artificial intelligence ‘GLaDOS’ guide you through a few simple test chambers that teach you all of the mechanics of the game one piece at a time. This not only helps to avoid boring tutorials, but also gives context to the situation, provides entertaining dialogue, and allows you to learn the game in a legitimate way. They are conveying the same information as a boring sign that says “place portal on the wall and go through”, but in a way that entertains and keeps players interested in the game.

Another game that I love that makes great use of conveyance is the first Dark Souls game. Dark Souls is a game that rewards exploration and experimentation. After players have learned the basic mechanics and controls of the game through the game’s admittedly mediocre tutorial level, they are left in a big open world and left to wander in any direction they choose. As the players explore, they will slowly be pushed in the right direction, not by the game forcing them, but by the limitations of their own skill. A new player may head in one direction, but find that it is far too difficult, so they choose the more common path. As they go along this common path, they will encounter new enemies and learn the ways to beat them one at a time in a controlled environment. There are no tutorials on how to defeat the enemies; learning that past the initial controls is up to the individual players. Once again, rather than having a big sign that points them in the right direction and tutorial popups on every enemy, Dark Souls conveys the same information through clever design and allowing the player to experiment and discover solutions on their own.

So, as you can see, being creative in the way you teach your game’s mechanics can make the difference. Every game is different, however, and you’ll always need to be consciously thinking about how you can teach your game to the player. For some games, less is more, and having a simple level that allows your player to experiment may be the best course of action. For others, your game might be very complex and you’ll need a way to teach them whether it be a tutorial sequence or something more creative and story driven like portal. Either way, no matter what the game, always try to avoid having a boring, time consuming tutorial like many that are far too common in games today.

The Animation Career Review has been researching and ranking the nation's top schools for aspiring animators and game designers since 2012. UAT's Bachelor of Arts in Game Design is ranked in the top 20 game design BA programs nationally, top 10 in the Southwest and #1 in Arizona.

The goal of the Animation Career Review is to "give students and their parents access to ample information so they can make an informed decision about the school they choose to attend and the program they pursue."

The criteria for the rankings encompasses:

• Academic reputation
• Admissions selectivity
• Depth and breadth of the program
• Value as it relates to tuition and indebtedness
• Geographic location
• Employment data

One of UAT's top game design grads is 2018 alumnus Eric Fernald, who landed his dream job and bought his dream car immediately after he graduated. Eric works as a game scenario designer at CGI, where he works with the latest software and hardware in game development such as VBS3 and Unreal Engine 4 to create training video games, battlefield visualizations and battle scene reenactments for the United States military.

      Eric Fernald's Demo Reel

"I choose UAT because of the intimate campus setting and constant addition of new technologies on campus," Eric said. He cites hands-on classes such as Game Production Studio, tough-love professors like Matthew Marquit and solid support from the Career Services team as reasons for his success. 

UAT game design alumnus Tyler Feddeler recently landed his first job at a AAA studio as a lighting artist at 343 Industries, where he works on a little game called Halo. Even though his degree is in game design, Tyler got to take art and animation classes during his time at UAT too. It took him a while to discover his niche in lighting, but once he did, he went all in on it. 

Electronic Arts (EA) assistant producer Brandon Kidwell graduated from UAT with his bachelor's degree in game design in 2013. He has worked on multiple AAA titles, including the mobile game Madden NFL Overdrive. He built the 2018 Madden Feast program, which lead to high player sentiment and one of the highest revenue days of the year. 

Want to be like Eric, Tyler and Brandon? Check out our Game Design program today!

According to the Bachelor’s Degree Center Organization, a free guide to traditional and online bachelor’s degree programs in all disciplines, recently announced four rankings of the best Game Design bachelor’s degree programs in the US.

PRNewswire reported that the four ranking categories are:

25 Best Bachelor's in Game Design Degree Programs for 2019 
(https://www.bachelorsdegreecenter.org/best-game-design-degree/) 
15 Best Online Game Design Bachelor's Degree Programs for 2019  
(https://www.bachelorsdegreecenter.org/best-online-game-design-degree/) 
10 Fastest Online Game Design Bachelor's Degree Programs for 2019 
(https://www.bachelorsdegreecenter.org/fastest-online-game-design-degree/) 
10 Most Affordable Online Game Design Bachelor's Degree Programs for 2019 
(https://www.bachelorsdegreecenter.org/affordable-game-design-degree/)

In the category for Fastest Accredited Online Game Design Bachelor’s Programs for 2019, the University of Advancing Technology was ranked third. UAT was also ranked #6 for Best Game Design Degree Online.

According to the BDC, "Enthusiasm for video games has created a global industry projected to reach $140 billion by 2020." Game degrees also reach further than just the Xbox, PC and Playstation. "Game art, design, and development are becoming central to all kinds of industries, from medicine (with doctors and nurses training on simulations) to education (with the gamification of learning) and even the military (with simulated training and drone warfare becoming key to protecting forces). Students learning programming and designing today will be transforming industries in ways we can't even predict tomorrow."

UAT continues to be regularly recognized as one of the top Game Design and Game Production degree programs in the country, offering accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission.

More than 14,000 people apply for Blizzard’s summer internship program. They hire around 100 interns. That’s a 0.71% acceptance rate. How do we know this information? Because we tweeted at their careers account. Twitter is an invaluable game dev job search tool. For example, Professor Clark’s nephew got his last three jobs at AAA studios from Twitter! In such a competitive industry, job seekers need to employ multiple tools and job search strategies to succeed.

UAT Students take on GDC 2019.

Another excellent resource for job-seeking game developers is the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and other conferences. “Do some research before you go to the conference,” UAT Game Development Professor Adam Moore said. Find out what positions each company is hiring for and what type of games they are working on. Don’t walk up to booths and ask questions that you can find the answers to online. “You don’t want to ask them what they’re looking for; you should already know. Talk about the skills that you have and the projects that you’ve worked on that show that you’re a good fit for their company,” Adam said.

Watch How to Crush It at GDC on our Facebook. 

UAT Game Programming Professor Mark Feldman is also a big proponent of IRL (in real life) events and conferences. Mark got his last job at Qualcomm by connecting with a tech recruiter at Siggraph, an annual computer graphics conference. He also attended Casual Connect Europe last summer. He traveled all the way across the pond to connect with Arizona-based TBN Studios Founder Jake Simpson, who presented on how they worked with Unity VR to create tools for Ready Player One.

The International Game Developers Association has a lot of helpful resources with 150 chapters worldwide. The Phoenix IGDA chapter is very active IRL and on Discord. They get together once a month to network and playtest. For more info on IGDA, reach out to Adam.

While a lot of truth exists in the saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know,” you still need a lot of talent, drive and dedication to make it in the gaming industry. A polished portfolio is the most important piece of the game dev job search pie. “My biggest mistake was not having a good enough art portfolio at graduation,” admitted Blake Bjerke, a University of Advancing Technology alumnus and environment artist at Cyan, Inc, the makers of Myst. It took Blake awhile to find his artist niche in environment art. “It’s important to find your focus and really start to practice and work it up into a great portfolio before you graduate," Blake said.

Some of Blake's work on the world Maray for the project Obduction. 

If you do 2D mobile art, then own it. If you want to be a character artist, then do not clutter your portfolio with level design or environment art pieces. Professor Feldman also recommends matching the game genres and styles in your portfolio to the style of the studio where you are applying. Just like you tailor your resume for specific roles, you can tailor your portfolio for specific studios.

Most hiring managers want to see at least four or five game-ready assets in a junior game developer’s portfolio. Include side projects to showcase your passion and commitment to your craft. Make sure you also explain how you did what you did. Help hiring managers understand your creative process and design thinking skills.

If you want to be a game developer, then you should make video games. “It’s one thing to create a piece of art or a level in a vacuum, but it’s something else entirely to actually develop it for a game,” Blake said. That’s why he encourages students at all levels to constantly contribute to projects.” Projects teach you about the constraints you’ll face, performance concerns, production pipelines, how art affects level design and more,” Blake said.

Not all game dev career paths are linear. “Being flexible is important,” Blake said. For example, UAT alumna Holly Sheppard started her career as a 3D artist making simulations and models at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. After working at an Arizona-based indie studio for a few years, she accepted at job at Scientific Games, where she works on slot machine games.

UAT alumnus Garrett Reuscher works as an educational application developer at Western University of Health Sciences, where he uses his skills in augmented reality and virtual reality to make training apps for medical students. UAT alumnus Charles Cozart started his career as a quality analyst at E-Line Media, where he moved into a gameplay engineer role after seven months! And UAT Game Art & Animation student Shelby Epley just accepted a job as a marketing assistant at the super cool Arizona startup SURF in the entertainment and advertising space.

Game developers have tons of transferable skills in UX design, technical project management, graphic design, animation and more!

Are you up for the game dev career challenge? Check out our Game Programming bachelor's degree today!

When Holly Sheppard graduated from the University of Advancing Technology with a degree in multimedia and digital animation, she immediately started working as a 3D artist—in a lab. She used her skills in Unreal Engine to create simulations and models of restricted areas of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Phoenix Chorale

After spending a year working in the Laboratory, perfecting her portfolio and applying to jobs across the country, she returned to Arizona to work as an environment artist at Rainbow Studios (formerly THQ), where she worked on a variety of games for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. When the studio closed, she didn’t want to leave the people and patios in Arizona, so she spent some time taking on small freelance gigs and pursuing her other passion: classical singing. She still sings with the Grammy-award-winning Phoenix Chorale, the Phoenix Opera and the Arizona Opera Chorus!

Just when Holly resolved to start applying for out-of-state game art jobs, she got a call from a slot machine company in Scottsdale. She didn’t know anything about slot machines but was excited by the chance to stay in Arizona and take on a new professional challenge. “I was also excited to find out that the development is very similar to the game development I was used to,” she said. And she gets to work on a lot of cool projects such as Kooza and Amaluna, two Cirque Du Soleil slot machine games. She even got to meet Billy Gibbons when she worked on a ZZ-Top slot machine.

Scientific Games

Holly’s current role at Scientific Games is "somewhere in between technical artist and graphic artist." She spends a lot of her time in After Effects and Photoshop doing motion graphic work. She also dabbles in 3D modeling, animation, concept work and graphic design. She collaborates with the Unity engineers on a daily basis to make sure all of the artwork gets implemented and functions properly.

Like many game developers, Holly had a tough time with her job search. “But I felt like I had a leg up when sending applications to studios because of my experience at UAT,” she said. During her time at UAT, Holly learned how fast tech moves. “New techniques and tools come out regularly, so being able to adapt quickly is important. But the fundamentals of art, color theory and composition stay the same.” she said. Her time at UAT taught her the value of both.

Holly capitalized on every opportunity to learn and improve while she was a UAT student, attending tech forums with industry professionals, completing internships, working on projects and participating in portfolio reviews. “You can build up a lot of experience that will help you get your foot in the door, but try to go beyond the basic requirements of classwork,” she said. “And always check to see how your portfolio looks on other computers!” she added.

Want to become an environment artist like Holly? Check out our Game Art & Animation degree program today!

For the first 15 years of Lynn DiGiacomo’s illustrious career in the gaming industry, she was the lone woman on the dev team. Then in 1995, she accepted a job at Sony Imagesoft, where she met Holliday Horton, the art director for the leading franchise title NFL GameDay. “Holliday paved the way with pipelines and processes for nearly all of the professional franchise titles that Sony produced at the time.” Working with Holliday spurred a streak of inspiration and innovation in Lynn. Now, she is surrounded by inspiring female game developers at the University of Advancing Technology, where she teaches game art and animation.

 Lynn (center) and other UAT faculty. Art by UAT alumna Ashley Casarrubias.

Lynn worked on several other franchise titles and a few original IP titles for extreme games during her tenure at Sony. “During this time, Holliday was a consistent presence and leader in innovation,” Lynn said. Holliday’s support and mentorship helped Lynn climb the ranks to become a key innovator in Sony’s pipelines and processes too. Then, with Sony’s support, Holliday launched RedZone Games, but Lynn and Holliday remained friends.

After 7 years at Sony, Lynn moved back to Phoenix to join Arizona’s leading game dev studio Rainbow Studios (formerly THQ), where she did a little bit of everything. She worked on exciting titles such as Untamed and Reflex and used her skills in animation, modeling, rigging, concept art, pipeline optimization, tools integration and project management.

Rainbow Studios

Lynn never forgot Holliday’s role in her professional and career development, which inspired her to start teaching. “Now we both enjoy opportunities to give back to the community through instruction and mentoring,” she said.

The 2018 viral article about the toxic culture of sexism at Riot Games sparked candid conversations online and on campus at UAT. Throughout Lynn’s 40-year career, she has heard many stories of injustice. She believes the key to professional success is how one responds to these circumstances. Lynn recommends “having a voice for positive change and ethics when needed, speaking to the circumstances with integrity and positive influence in a professional manner,” she said. Lynn recognizes that speaking up doesn’t always lead to change. “If you speak up and are not satisfied with the outcome, then you can always look at other options,” she said.

Lynn encourages female developers to embrace the power of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. “Do not lose who you are in the chaos of competing. Know that each woman has a unique perspective,” she said. Femininity is only part of the equitation, but Lynn views it as an underestimated advantage because a lot of people in the industry do not understand it fully. “The best career advice I can give female developers is to just be you and enjoy your journey,” she said.

Want to learn how to make video games with Lynn? Check out our Game Art & Animation degree program today!

Last weekend, the Global Game Jam (GGJ) took place around the world with UAT listed as the home base for Arizona. UAT students, alumni and local game developers attended the Phoenix Global Game Jam revving out 48-hours of game development and judges said they were impressed!

The theme for the 2018 Global Game Jam was “Transmission,” sparking lots of ideas of how to create a game around this.

From UAT’s Game Jam location, 29 games were submitted to the website with 17 playable games on display for judging on Sunday evening in the UAT Commons.

Global Game Jam at University of Advancing Technology – Monster Vault Entertainment

“We saw completed games developed for PC, 2D, 3D, mobile, and VR including Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The variety was inspiring and great to see,” said judge and Program Champion Derric Clark.

You can check out the submitted games here.

Best Overall:
GigaBlast (VR for HTC Vive)

Best Theme:
Spooky Business

Best Art:
Weaponized Walkie Talkies

Honorable Mentions: (strong in the voting discussion)
Carrier Pigeon
Choreo-Mania
Hell’s Kitchen
Huntia
Malware
O2 Critical

Professor Clark said, “An amazing amount of content was produced in just 48 hours, seeing months of work completed over a weekend is extremely impressive. These were really great submissions, with many, many completed games. It was difficult to narrow the field down for the awards.”

“From a content standpoint, this was one of the best Arizona Game Jams thus far, amazing work completed and shown to judges,” Clark said.

A lot of different perspectives were taken on the theme, it was great to see the creativity kick in to produce a diverse set of games, both in content and play style.

Last weekend, the Global Game Jam (GGJ) took place around the world with UAT listed as the home base for Arizona. UAT students, alumni and local game developers attended the Phoenix Global Game Jam revving out 48-hours of game development and judges said they were impressed!

The theme for the 2018 Global Game Jam was "Transmission," sparking lots of ideas of how to create a game around this.

From UAT's Game Jam location, 29 games were submitted to the website with 17 playable games on display for judging on Sunday evening in the UAT Commons.

Global Game Jam at University of Advancing Technology - Monster Vault Entertainment

"We saw completed games developed for PC, 2D, 3D, mobile, and VR including Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The variety was inspiring and great to see," said judge and Program Champion Derric Clark.

You can check out the submitted games here.

Best Overall:
GigaBlast (VR for HTC Vive)

Best Theme:
Spooky Business

Best Art:
Weaponized Walkie Talkies

Honorable Mentions: (strong in the voting discussion)
Carrier Pigeon
Choreo-Mania
Hell’s Kitchen
Huntia
Malware
O2 Critical

Professor Clark said, "An amazing amount of content was produced in just 48 hours, seeing months of work completed over a weekend is extremely impressive. These were really great submissions, with many, many completed games. It was difficult to narrow the field down for the awards."

Developing for Virtual Reality at the Global Game Jam

"From a content standpoint, this was one of the best Arizona Game Jams thus far, amazing work completed and shown to judges," Clark said.

A lot of different perspectives were taken on the theme, it was great to see the creativity kick in to produce a diverse set of games, both in content and play style.

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game jam event taking place around the world at physical locations. Join the Phoenix Global Game Jam for 48-hours of game development at UAT's tech-infused campus.

Need a team? Don't stress. There will be dev teams in need of designers, programmers and artists!

Whiskered Away indie game at Global Game Jam

Join in the fun and excitement of the Phoenix Global Game Jam, kicking off Friday, Jan. 26 at 5 p.m. running until time is called on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 5:30 p.m.

Contact: Adam Moore | amoore@uat.edu

Register on Eventbrite and take a look at UAT's Global Game Jam page.

Use hashtag #GGJ18 to join in the worldwide conversation about the event!