Archive for December, 2009

iDev Semester End

Friday, December 11th, 2009 posted by camilo
iiiidesign

iiiidesign

From the beginning of the semester the project iDev team always looked at how to create new and innovative game experiences for the iPhone.  Over the course of the semester we developed ten prototypes that explore different ways to interact with the iPhone.  After this prototyping process we decided to take two of these functional prototypes and created two full games that we spent a lot of time polishing and playtesting.

For our first prototype, Mismos, we projects we are pleased to announce that our vertical slice of the game it available in the Apple app store.  This game is a puzzle platformer where the player controls multiple avatars with the iPhone, additionally the game includes three different levels with three different game mechanics which show our innovative control mechanics. We welcome you to download our app from the app store and let us know what you think.

Additionally our second project Move It! has been submitted to IGF Mobile where we still await confirmation, but in case anybody is interested, check out this promotional video and let us know if you would like to play. We might be able to hook you up =).

Finally, we are sad to living the Silicon Valley campus, and we would like to thank EA Redwood Shores for giving us an amazing experience.  Not only they let us stay in their amazing facilities, where we had a great cafeteria, game library rentals, great office space, but they were a great source of feedback from our project, so we would like to take the thank all the people here that saw that group of loud students in the office and wondered about what crazy stuff were we doing.

We welcome you to check our project website at www.iiidesign.com where we will continue our development of iPhone games, and for all of the students that are interested in the Silicon Valley campus, we can say we had an amazing experience and you shouldn’t think twice about coming here.

Final Presentations – Check.

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 posted by carl

Final presentations were today, and we’ll be all wrapped up by Friday afternoon.


iDev Team

iDev Team



ORCAS Team (Cal Academy)

ORCAS (California Academy of Sciences) Team

Fall ’09 End of Semester – Video

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 posted by carl

Our final presentations were today, and Jiyoung put together this video of the semester to show before presentations started. Looks like we had a pretty good time!

Meeting Bing

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 posted by theresa

ETC meets with Bing Gordon

Bing Gordon, with imaginary iPhone and real ETC students

On Tuesday, November 11, the ETC-SV students went to Kleiner Perkins to speak with Bing Gordon. For those who don’t know, Bing Gordon was the former CCO of EA for ten years and is now a partner of Kleiner Perkins and a board member of Zynga and ngmoco:). Bing’s knowledge of the games industry is immense and we were very lucky to have received the opportunity to sit and talk with him in a private session.

Bing’s conversation with us covered various topics within games. The amount and value of the knowledge he imparted on us would be difficult to explain in a blog post. We talked about the “videogamification” of various things such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Hazmat, and government organizations. We talked about the business side of the games industry, comparing console to mobile to browser and downloads. And he gave us a very good lesson on the golden mechanics of game design, valuing user interface, avatar customization, and sense of achievement as core mechanics.

Bing was very enthusiastic about ETC’s program and talked about past projects that had come out of the ETC. He complimented on our fast iteration processes, explaining that our greatest strengths laid in our speed, our interdisciplinary approach, and our improvisation. He said that this made it so ETC students excelled in small teams and short development cycles.


ETC meets with Bing Gordon

Handshake demo


ETC meets with Bing Gordon

Handshake in action

Project iDev also was able to share their iPhone games with him and we received very valuable feedback on our title, Handshake. Initial user experience, from the tutorial to the very title of the app, was the primary focus of Bing’s critique and we were grateful to have his insight on our game.

Finally, in addition to meeting with Bing Gordon, Bryan Larson and Brian Schneider of Zynga came to visit with us at Kleiner Perkins as well.

It was an incredibly educational experience to have been able to sit and talk with Bing and we were grateful that he had reserved two hours of his busy schedule solely to talk about games and the ETC with us.

Thanks Bing!

  • Subscribe!