VCU news

By Brian McNeill

Before a standing-room only crowd of Virginia Commonwealth University students and Richmond community members in The Workshop on the lower level of James Branch Cabell Library, video game developer and VCU Brandcenter experience design graduate student Ruthie Edwards is delivering a crash course for beginners interested in creating their first video game.

“The game that you’ve always dreamed of making, that's an awesome goal. But don't even try it,” Edwards said. “Make a small game first. It's going to make your life so much easier.”

Edwards dreams of one day creating a massively multiplayer online game in which players tag graffiti on walls through augmented reality and collect stickers with their friends. The scope of such a game, however, would be next to impossible for one person or a small team of developers.

“This would be like a $1 million game. Multiplayer is way too hard. Online requires too much testing, it's too finicky. To try to make this would be ridiculously hard. So what we do is we keep crossing things out until we get something that's a little bit more feasible, which is to say, just players collecting stickers,” she said. “So that's what our game is going to be about.”

Edwards’ presentation was the first Wednesdays in The Workshop of the semester. These weekly hands-on demonstrations teach how to use the creative resources, services and workspaces of VCU Libraries’ Innovative Media Department.

This spring, Wednesdays in The Workshop will teach attendees how to use sewing machines, DIY bookbinding techniques for zines, how to create hand-drawn animation, how to fly drones and use them for photography, leatherworking and armorsmithing, how to produce a podcast and more.

Wednesday’s workshop on introductory video game development was a bit unusual, in that it was timed to lead into a weekend of video game creation at the Global Game Jam, a worldwide challenge in which participants team up to make a game over a single weekend.

There's no prizes or winners or losers. It's just for fun and to make games.

“It's kind of like a hackathon, but where you have 48 hours to make a game,” said Edwards, an alumna of the Department of Kinetic Imaging in the VCU School of the Arts. “At the beginning of the weekend, Friday night, they'll announce a theme and you have to make a game based on that. It's a team-based thing. There's no prizes or winners or losers. It's just for fun and to make games.”

The event is open to anyone, regardless of skill level. “So even those who don’t know code can contribute art, 3-D modeling, writing, level design, music, audio, and all the other components that go into making a game,” Edwards said.

The Global Game Jam at VCU will kick off with a launch event in Room 1107 of the Academic Learning Commons, 1000 Floyd Ave., at 7 p.m. Friday.

The game jam itself will then take place throughout this weekend in the third-floor lecture hall of Cabell Library, 901 Park Ave.

The event is organized by RVA Game Jams, a group of local game developers and enthusiasts, and co-hosted by VCU Libraries and the Department of Kinetic Imaging, and also supported by the School of the Arts departments of Communication Arts and Art Education.

“It's exciting to watch the launch of the games and to see the uncertainty and determination on the faces of the attendees,” said Pam Turner, chair of the Department of Kinetic Imaging. “I enjoy seeing my current students collaborating with alumni and meeting people in the community who have similar interests. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn how to work on a team, to work within limitations, to strengthen and apply skills in sound, image, animation and/or coding and to see how these all tie together to make something bigger than the parts. Ultimately, it's a challenge for the imagination and a great problem-solving workout.”

The Workshop in Cabell Library offers a variety of hardware and software for making video games.

“We have a computer station that has lots of software for creating games, including Unity, Unreal, Maya, Microsoft Visual Studio, and the Autodesk suite,” said Kelsey Sheaffer, multimedia production specialist in the Innovative Media Department and organizer of Wednesdays in The Workshop. “We also have a gaming studio, which has multiple consoles for playing and testing games, as well as experimenting with virtual reality and augmented reality.”

Wednesday’s workshop was meant to show how video game design is accessible and interdisciplinary, and that VCU Libraries has all the necessary tools available to the VCU community, said Sheaffer, who received a Master of Fine Art degree from the Department of Kinetic Imaging in 2016.

“Popular video games are generally huge, complex productions that take many people a lot of time to design and create — but there are also really compelling, small-scale games being made by a single person or a modest team,” she said.

For a full schedule of Wednesdays in The Workshop this semester, visit https://www.library.vcu.edu/about/news/2018/wednesdays-in-the-workshop-explore-gaming-virtual-reality-podcasting-bookbinding-sewing-animation-drones-and-more-.html

For more information on this weekend’s Global Game Jam, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/808885049316713/.