Working on multidisciplinary, collaborative game team projects is a cornerstone of all four years of a DigiPen education. Read on for a breakdown of junior year game projects.
Students make a significant leap with their junior year game team projects. For the first time, all disciplines come together to create an original 3D game over the course of the year, following an iterative, milestone-based production pipeline modeled on professional game studios. “Students are expected to engage in the planning process, in development, and in reflection, all with the goal of really understanding how the disciplines come together and achieve things greater than the sum of their parts,” says junior game project instructor Andrew Kaplan.
Junior game projects are split between two semesters, with the first focused on team formation and pre-production, and the second on production. Students begin by pitching junior game concepts and visual styles, recruiting and solidifying their teams during the first few weeks of fall semester. “Normally there is a person or a group of people that create the seed idea for the project, and that attracts students to come together to form the team,” Kaplan says. With permission from their instructors, juniors may also opt to join senior-level game teams, and vice versa.
Because junior teams are much larger than previous years, ranging from a minimum of six members to upwards of 20, students often start to take on more specialized roles. That might look like design students focusing specifically on narrative, level, or systems design; digital artists splitting into modelers, riggers, animators, or concept artists; and so on. “The bigger team sizes afford students the chance specialize because there’s usually enough students to cover all the requirements,” Kaplan says. “Still, students are encouraged to be flexible when it comes to doing what’s right for the team and for the project when needed instead of solely restricting their work to certain areas of the game.”
Using the Unity or Unreal Engine, students need to aim for roughly 15 minutes of 3D gameplay in their junior games. Along the way, they must meet six iterative production milestones, with three per semester.
In GAM 300, the first milestone is split between team formation and the concept phase, where students identify and document high level outlines of what they intend to make. The second milestone is all about developing rapid prototypes of their individual game mechanics and playtesting them with outsiders to get feedback. The third and final milestone of GAM 300 has them taking that feedback and developing a larger proof-of-concept prototype. “They do a two- to five-minute prototype of their game where those mechanics come together to make a cohesive experience that has a traditional beginning, middle, and end. It’s essentially a very short snippet of their final game,” Kaplan says.
In GAM 350 during the spring semester, students shift into full production mode. For their fourth milestone, students build out the full structure of their 15-minute game, continuing to playtest along the way. “Then they hone the experience based on playtesting feedback for milestone five and six, iterating on it twice until they have their final game,” Kaplan says.
In GAM 300 and 350, faculty from each discipline meet with the teams at least once week to offer mentorship and guidance on the art, design, audio, and programming. “Students also do a presentation at each milestone, where faculty have a chance to provide feedback and make sure teams are scoping the project realistically with the time they have,” Kaplan says.
Juniors can choose to continue working on their game project for an optional third semester in GAM 375, a post-production course. “GAM 375 lets students focus on polish, allowing them to iterate even more on their art and gameplay,” Kaplan says. “Many of the teams that decide to do 375 have the goal of shipping a really high-quality final product on Steam by the end.”
Related articles in this series
Previous Article
Next Article