Media Design School students finalists

Media Design School students finalists in IGF China Awards

A third-person shooting game made by a group of students from Auckland’s Media Design School has been chosen as one of five finalists in the student section of the 2nd Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF) China.

Dead Steel is a futuristic alien shooter made for PC – and was the final year project of a team of seven students from the school’s Graduate Diploma of Game Development.

The students were in the second year of the intensive two-year course, and spent nearly six months developing the game. Media Design School is the only institution in New Zealand that offers NZQA-approved diplomas in game development.

Game Development programming tutor Jon Booth said that he was very proud of the students’ achievements. He compared the IGF Awards China to the “Sundance of the indie games industry”.

“The students pulled together as a team and worked very independently. They spent six weeks in pre-production, followed by 19 weeks of full production.

They were self-directed the entire time, apart from their lab hours and the end result was fun, polished and professional.”

Game Development art tutor Mike Porter said that the team had been inspired by “old school gameplay”.

“They had some pretty big ambitions to start with, but were able to figure out very quickly what worked and what didn’t. Dead Steel has a dark sci-fi landscape that is brought alive with lighting, particle effects and hordes of bad guys.”

The students involved in the project were Paul Chambers (Project leader/programmer), Russell Bakewell (lead designer), Xin Chen (lead artist), Joshua O’Connor (lead programmer), Alex Rude (creative lead), Nicholas Christian (programmer) and Sean Flannigan (programmer).

The IGF Awards China is held as part of the prestigious Game Developers Conference China, held 5-7 December 2010 at the Shanghai International Convention Centre. The awards were open to students from countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

This is the second time that Media Design School students have been chosen as finalists in the IGF Awards. In 2006, 12 students from the school won the IGF Student Showcase in San Francisco.

Have a go at the game: http://www.mediadesignschoolcom/game-testing

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