Unlocking the CAGE
Computer Science students present expo for self-made games
With game developers making small scale games for recognition before profit, indie game development is a rewarding opportunity. Independent games are trending and becoming the norm in the gaming community, and at CSU our computer science majors have begun developing their own games.
The student-created games were presented on April 15 at the first Columbus Annual Gaming Expo (CAGE), hosted by the recently formed Georgia Game Developer Association (GGDA). The event was further sponsored by the Peachtree mall GameStop, which provided posters as prizes for raffle winners.
As the first student chapter of the Middle/South division of the program, the Columbus State University GGDA has been asked to set up chapters at other universities, like Georgia State. Middle/South chapter President Rodrigo R. Obando and Student chapter President Daniel Rockwell have been with the 30-40 member group since its conception. Both presidents conceptualized the organization in February but didn’t start it until March of this year. The organization was officially recognized at CSU on April 13.
With CAGE happening just days after the GGDA’s formation at CSU, the students in Dr. Rodrigo A. Obando’s Game Programming II class prepared to showcase their work. A week before, CAGE the teams brought their games to Davidson for beta testing and in order to gain interest for CAGE, as well as to fix any problems their games had prior to the expo. CAGE had four games (Radical Target, Project Anomaly, In Search of Ivy, and Emory Outpost) produced by 15 students of varying group sizes.
Both Radical Target and Emory Outpost are shooters, though different in nature as Radical Target is a light gun game reminiscent of Time Crisis, and Emory Outpost is similar to the original DOOM. In Search of Ivy is the sole horror game, is like Silent Hill, and uses the Oculus Rift to add a truer experience through virtual reality; Project Anomaly is an RPG which plays something like World of Warcraft.
The event was not all about playing games – during the event class members gave PowerPoint presentations in the Columbus room on specific aspects that led to the creation of their games, such as video game physics, story writing and art. “Getting to CAGE was struggle because making the game was hard enough, but we had to pick a day when we could all present our projects. The best part was finishing and seeing the response to our games,” said senior computer science major Herschel Grier.
The GGDA will have events over the summer in the CCT auditorium. On April 28 and May 26 there will be chapter meetings, on June 24 there will a movie screening of “The Imitation Game,” and a media festival and Super Smash Brothers tournament will be held on July 16 and 29 respectively.
