Creating Game Worlds

A fresh video game enthusiast turned hopeful game designer arrived at the Vancouver Film School last year, ready to show the world what he was made of. While studying with my classmates, four of my fellow team mates and I found each other and began production on a little game mod entitled "Bloom." A totally non-violent video game, "Bloom" soon turned from an assignment, to an obsession; from home-work, to a life's quest. All five members of my student project quickly became excited with creating a world filled with life that could stand up against the blood drenched games dominating the market. What we arrived at was a simple, yet expressive mod built on the UT2004 engine about a little girl who is bursting with life. Living in a city so closely intertwined with nature was a major influence for my group, and the feeling of growth and creation was something we definitely wanted to inject into our game. Six months of twelve hour days and we finally were ready to call our mod an alpha release and let others experience what we had created. The responses that we received from every day game players and industry professionals alike were really positive for a student created game, and it inspired us to continue on with our project until exhaustion (and graduation) made us put it to rest. I am incredibly proud of the hard work and creativity that my fellow team members poured into the project, and I'll never forget the experience as I go forth into my professional career as a game designer. I don't think any of us will ever stop creating worlds, fashioning experiences, or creating fantastical places that gamers can escape to; but I'll never forget my first.

I'm a gamer, through and through. I cringe to think of a world bound by the possible. The digital world is my Eden, and its creation, my responsibility. It is one thing to like playing video games, it is quite another to create your own. Our digital worlds are boundless and expansive. They can contain a massive war-land filled with fire and rage, or be a world at peace. To create a game is to craft a world from your own imagination, a place to call your own. I knew my future was pointing me to be a part of the video game creation process early on, and my first, trusty, Pentium II 450mhz powered computer allowed me to design, create and explore early on in my life. Now, five years later, I am working at a professional game studio, and am creating worlds with other dreamers, worlds that surprise and excite me every day. The student game that I worked on recently has gathered some interest and actually won an industry award. While I am proud of the recognition of my efforts, I am even more proud of the game that my friends and I created on our Pentium 4 PC's. A totally non-violent game based off of the ideals of beauty and creation. We believe that a world filled with such turmoil as ours has enough violence in it already; so "Bloom" was the answer to the question, do games always have to be violent and bloody to be entertaining? While our initial release of our mod does not stand up against the vision that we have for it in our heads, it is a first step on a long journey to completion. With our trusty Pentium 4 computers and Pentium Core 2 Duo laptops in hand, we will continue building our world for the enjoyment of others; with a growing sense of accomplishment and pride. Congrats to Intel for enabling millions to create their dreams, and in turn, congrats to those who create and never stop dreaming.

Art, Environment, Gaming, Music, Sports, Video

Miko Wilson uses a laptop powered by  

Intel® Core™2 Duo processor