Lindsay France/University Photography

Fans gather in a Carpenter Hall computer lab to try out new video games. Audience responses figure into students' grades.

Students and community members flocked to Carpenter Hall May 11 to try out new computer games developed by students in the Game Design Initiative at Cornell (GDIAC). The audience for the annual showcase included at least 500 children, according to computer science lecturer Walker White, director of GDIAC.

The event is in effect a final exam for students in game-design courses, as their grades will be based in part on audience response to their projects. Students also vie for prizes that include professional games and game-related gift cards. Most games are created by teams of programmers, artists and musicians.

Top prizewinner in the Director’s Choice category (chosen by White and two gaming professionals) was “Casino Heist,” which the judges called fast-paced, easy to play and “most commercial.” You’ve just robbed the casino, and your job is to get out through thick crowds of people, whom you can disperse by throwing money at them.

Provided

Action in the game "Pirates of the Stratosphere."

Second place went to “Square Waves,” a unique contribution to the growing field of “sound-only” games, which began among the visually impaired. “Square Waves” is played by two people, one of whom hears sound through headphones but sees no video, while the other sees video but hears no sound. They must avoid lava pits, which can be seen but not heard, and electric fields, which can be heard but not seen. The sound-only player gets 3-D sound – a technical tour-de-force in binaural sound synthesis – and can hear the sighted partner’s footsteps.

“Most audio games are horror games, emphasizing the fact that you’re blind,” said George Karalis ’13, creator of the game. “I wanted to take a different direction and emphasize what you gain by listening.” Karalis wrote his undergraduate thesis on the audio gaming movement, and he will be graduating into a job at Microsoft.

Other awards were based on audience voting in separate categories for projects by students in introductory and advanced game-design courses. First in the introductory category was “Pirates of the Stratosphere,” a steampunk shoot-’em-up with dirigibles, balloons and biplanes; and second was “B33P,” in which players program a robot for a Mario-style jumping course. First place among advanced students went to “Apsis,” an “aesthetically beautiful” game for Android tablets that uses touch control to guide a flock of migrating birds. Second place went to “MicroPig,” a game for iPhones and iPads that involves swinging by your tongue.

Many of the games will be available as free downloads at http://gdiac.cis.cornell.edu/.

Launched in 2001, GDIAC offers an undergraduate program and a minor in game design, and an outreach program for junior high and high school students in the Ithaca area. It was one of the earliest undergraduate programs in game design, and the first to be offered at an Ivy League institution. Many alumni now work at major game companies and others are creating startups in what has become a billion-dollar industry.