A campus group plans to develop a marketable video game by the end of the academic year, and students are invited to join the process.
The UO Game Development Group is currently looking for computer programmers, graphic artists, digital music composers and writers, said Jim Allen, outreach coordinator for the computer and information science department.
An organizational meeting will be at 4:30 p.m. today in 220 Deschutes.
“It’s just kind of everyone teaching each other how to make games,” Allen said.
Chris GauthierDickey, a doctoral student in computer and information science who founded the group a few years ago, said the group hasn’t made any games yet but could this year with the right leadership.
Large video game companies often perform market research to determine what kinds of games could succeed and then contract with smaller video game companies to have those games made, GauthierDickey said.
Small game developers also sometimes market their products to larger developers, and while GauthierDickey said this strategy is less successful now than it was during the 1980s, Allen said that in this scenario, a game developed on the University campus and sold or marketed to a small, local game company could wind up all over the country.
GauthierDickey said the main point of developing a game on campus would not be to make a lot of money, but to have something students could put on their resumes. Allen said the group also helps career development by bringing industry professionals to meetings to speak to students and offer employment advice.
GauthierDickey founded the group to bring students together who are interested in making games. He no longer directs the group but maintains an advisory role.
One of the original advisers was an art faculty member who has since left the University, GauthierDickey said.
“I didn’t want it to be just computer science people because there’s very few computer science people that have the artistic skills for modern games,” GauthierDickey said.
When he started the group, GauthierDickey found that many of the students who joined were already in informal programming groups with their friends. On a professional level, game development also has a collaborative nature. Major companies have teams of 30 to 60 people, GauthierDickey said, and independent companies have five to six people on a team.
Allen said any game made by the group would probably focus more on mastering the basic skills of video game development than on developing an innovative plot or concept.
“I wouldn’t expect it to be inspirationally different from other games,” Allen said.
GauthierDickey, who will teach an upper-division computer and information science course on game programming this spring, said less complicated types of video games that students might create include 3D space combat simulators and strategy games.

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