UCI students put their game faces on

Christine Carrillo

Many students at the university spent last week in agony. They had

finals. The end of the spring quarter was approaching, and many

graduations were about to commence, but the students still had to

finish a battery of tests.

For one class in the information and computer science department

at UC Irvine, the final exam depended on playing games. On Friday,

students in the university’s computer game development course

demonstrated the different computer games they had created during the

10-week course for gaming industry representatives.

“Students are fascinated by computer games, but to many people, a

computer game equates to mindless pastime or worse,” said Dan Frost,

the professor of the course. “I see computer games as complex pieces

of both software and art, that students are extremely motivated to

create their own games and, not incidentally, that Irvine is one of

the world centers of the computer game industry. It would be a shame

not to take advantage of these factors at our university.”

The course required each team of students to design a game,

develop user documentation and then demonstrate its playability.

“Making games is not exactly the most relaxing job in the world.

It’s actually an incredible amount of work,” said 22-year-old Lloyd

Tulles, who created a game called Hyperbol with three other students.

“It really is difficult, but when it all comes together, it’s amazing

to see it being played and being enjoyed by someone else. That’s the

reward.”

While seeing someone playing the finished product is a reward for

the creator, it’s also a testament to the talents of the team behind

it, the most essential factor when looking for new hires.

“There’s so much cross-genre stuff that’s happening in the gaming

industry, it’s just exploding,” said Steve Moret, who went through

the same class at UCI three years ago and now works as a lead

programmer with Troika Games. “Electronic entertainment is just

intertwining everywhere.

“It’s a big field and it’s a little tough to get into,” he said.

“This has to kind of be your dream, and you have to be very motivated

to be here. We need to be able to see what they can do, to see if

they are actually capable of putting their ideas into one cohesive

game.”

The gaming industry has continued to grow over the years and has

boomed with the help of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Spiderman”

and “The Matrix,” creating successful game versions of mega-hit

movies. Now, students, many of whom learned their computer skills by

playing computer games, are seeking careers in the gaming industry.

“In my opinion, the gaming industry has the richest combination of

areas of interest that you can possibly find,” Tullues said.

“Anything you can think of in computer science, you can find in

computer gaming. ... It’s where all these technologies come together

and it’s continuing to change at an enormous rate.”