Correction: 3-D animation sophomore Anthony Ortiz’s name is missing from the Northwest Vista College game creation team.
Student-designed 3D game features a female scientist time traveler.
By Jahna Lacey
sac-ranger@alamo.edu
“Time Glitch,” a 3D, third-person shooter adventure video game created by 15 students at Northwest Vista College, won third place in the student media competition at the Captivate Conference Oct. 6 in the Palmer Center in Austin.
“Time Glitch” features a female scientist, Professor Alexis Stunden, who works as a product tester for a company called Chrono Co. that makes time-manipulating devices such as time machines.
Stunden is working on and testing a product called a time gun. The protagonist tests the time gun prototype and decides it is too dangerous to use so she scraps the project.
Just as the protagonist makes her decision, time gets disrupted and tangled in a paradox in which ancient creatures, such as dinosaurs, and robots from the future exist simultaneously.
As chaos ensues, Stunden must fix the contraption to repair time.
“Half of the competition was our product and the other half was to market our product,” 3-D animation sophomore Victoria Sertich said.
The competitors were judged on how well they worked as a team at their booth and the outreach methods used to advertise their product. Time Glitch was available to play at the booth.
Game production sophomore Sarah Richmond said students carpooled to Austin every day during the conference to staff the booth. “We had to promote our game and work as a team to get the highest scoring game at the competition in order to win the grand prize of $5,000, the honor of winning and, of course, the bullet point on our résumés, saying ‘Captivate Conference winner.’”
The first place winner received $5,000, second place received $2,500, and third place received $1,000.
During the Elec-tronic Entertainment Expo College Game Competition June 11-13 in Los Angeles, NVC students were among five finalists to be recognized as best student talent in video game development.
The other universities to compete at E3 were Brigham Young University, Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin-Stout.
The NVC students in the E3 competition were 3-D animation sophomores Sertich, Joe Guerra, Paul Scofield, Amber Gregerson, Rachel Ward, Laurencio Baland, Cori Cunningham, and Kyle Reynolds; game production sophomores Richmond, Selinda Garcia, Chris Hathaway and Willie Corona; and gaming program sophomores Preston Elmore and John Priest.
“The E3 convention was great,” Sertich said. “It was such a surprise that our project would take us this far. It was unreal. We had our own booth next to the other finalists. People from around the world would come and play our game and they liked it.”
Sertich said “Time Glitch” was made for a one-semester game simulation class. She said because of the E3 deadline, she and her classmates had to finish the game three weeks earlier than the class deadline.
For more information about the Captivate Conference, visit http://captivateconference.com/compete/student-multimedia-project-competition/.
For more information on game development at Northwest Vista, visit www.alamo.edu/nvc/academics/departments/game-development-programming/.
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