Archive for ‘Video games’
In fall 2010, I worked as a producer and audio director on a video game project called Galactic Shadow Shooter at the Centre for Digital Media. The game is an HTML5 arcade-action title our seven-person team created for Microsoft Game Studios. I helped build and fill the game's official site, and was charged with aligning our biweekly deliverables with the client's vision via documenting an ongoing Vision Document and Project Charter. As an audio director, I was responsible for creating and implementing all the sound effects and soundtracks related to the project, using GarageBand '11, Adobe Soundbooth CS5 and Audacity. Unfortunately, the game is not available for public play. You can read a production diary I wrote at the game's official site. Also below is a trailer I created for the game using iMovie '11. Galactic Shadow Shooter - Trailer from Nick Lewis on Vimeo. And gameplay video, courtesy...
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The Project I entered the 2nd annual Global Game Jam at the University of British Columbia in early February 2010, an event where amateur game designers from across the world create and collaborate on a video game in just 48 hours. The theme of this year’s jam was “Deception,” and the game had to involve “A skunk, a monk or a punk.” I lucked out with a great team, and we set about trying to rapidly prototype an idea that fit these parameters. Working non-stop from Friday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 3 p.m., we fleshed out a game inspired by Peggle (who doesn’t love Peggle!) that involved two skunks stuck inside the belly of a monster. They find a tumor-like outgrowth named Mr. Pickles who shoots them out from his mouth, and they try to break out of this monster’s belly by ricocheting themselves off dead cells and...
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The Project As our final six-week assignment for George Johnson’s Visual Story class, our task was to create a game that explored aspects of journey, transition, and character development through an interactive game or film experience. We were asked to consider the mythical tale of Charon and his boat traveling down the River Styx, transporting dead souls who may or may not interact with one another. But its main tenants included the following: “The specific challenge for this exercise is developing strong characters.” The idea was that the more the user explores the game space or environment, the stronger any sense of the personality of one or more characters becomes. Also from the assignment instructions: “The nature of the player should be addressed and made clear within the project.” As with most of this course, we were also working to understand implicit vs. explicit narrative and what role these types of communication...
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The Project The final assignment in our Building Virtual Worlds class was lovingly dubbed “The Kobayashi Maru,” after the no-win test Spock creates and Kirk cheats in Star Trek. We were given five weeks to design a student installation for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition, or CODE Live, which had leased our school’s warehouse for the Olympic month. We began with two weeks for student pitches that had to meet CODE’s ideals, which were to promote creativity, connectivity and collaboration. From there, three weeks remained from bringing three winning proposals from paper to physical form, to a level presentable to a global audience. I was assigned to the team that pitched the Collaborative Hallway Lit-Obstacle Experiment, or CHLOE. CHLOE consists of 12 square pads placed in a 3x4 pattern down a hallway, so that anyone crossing can't help but walk over. When a person walks over one of its...
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