by Giuseppe Liquori
Burlington, VT- This past week, numerous game developers and publishers proudly showed off their work to the public at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as E3, each game and project at it’s own point in development. The EMC had its own day to show off its projects, albeit not to the public consumer. June 18th was a day for cross team critique, for each team to show off their project in its current state and gain feedback for improvement from all members of the EMC team.
Starting at 10am, the first team to receive critique was the Henson Team. Their project involves creating a proposal to The Jim Henson Company to revamp how the company shares the content of Jim Henson’s famous Red Book.
The Make a Change Team
Up next was the Make A Change team, one of the larger teams in the EMC, if not the largest. Their game, a series of 4 mini games connected through a comic-style narrative, is designed to make the player more aware of harassment on college campuses. Today marked the first time the team presented their game as a whole, with all the games connected via a game hub. It was a proud moment for the team.
The Maker Lab showing off a prototype of Project Icarus
The Maker Lab had a few projects to show off. For the upcoming Art Hop Maker Faire, they are creating what they are calling the Pixel Cloud. A prototype right now, its function is to analyze tweets matching a certain criteria (a hashtag most likely) for their mood and display lights accordingly. They also showed off Project Variance and Project Icarus. Project Variance is a co-op game where each player controls a different axis of movement for a blue ball. The goal is to move it in a 3D environment into a red box. It’s a fun and challenging take cooperative gameplay. Project Icarus is a virtual reality flight experience, hence the name reference to the Greek myth. It combines a back-pack wing controller and a Virtual Reality headset to allow the participant to experience flight. They also have another top-secret project in the works that involves both water and fire.
The Vermont African American Heritage Trail (VAAHT) Team is working on a plan to help the VAAHT develop a web application and social media tools to help with its goal to educate both Vermont residents and tourists about the large role Vermont has played in African American history. Here’s a guide for the curious.
The EMC Audience
The Enter the Cave Team showed off the new UI for their game as well as early gameplay. Their game is meant to help incoming college students in dealing with potential scenarios they might encounter living in a dorm environment.
The last team to go through the critique process was the Vermont International Film Festival (VTIFF) team. They are in the testing stages of their mobile web application for VTIFF, designed to aid attendees to the festival with voting and accessing movie information, such as trailers and screening times.
The food was delicious.
The critique was invaluable to each team. A fresh perspective on a project can provide new ideas to explore and it’s also refreshing to take a break and see other teams’ projects. The food provided for lunch was delicious and a pleasant surprise for team members. The next steps for all teams are to take the feedback they received and make adjustments and tweak their projects as needed.