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Student Game Postmortem - Chase the Chicken
Beth A. Dillon writes "The CMP Game Career Guide website for aspiring developers and game students has been launched, with several useful resources available to people wanting an in to the games industry. As an inspiration, the Student Postmortem: Chase the Chicken details what went right and wrong for an Art Institute of Vancouver project." From the article: "In Chase the Chicken, players assume the role of Chase, the frantic chicken, who narrowly escapes the blade of an oversized and over-zealous Chef. What follows is a ridiculously chaotic pursuit through a South American village with Chef and fanatical villagers clipping at Chase's tail-feathers. Inspired loosely by the opening sequence in the film City of God (Miramax, 2002), the idea was a bit of a tough sell to a team of students... but that's a topic for later."
Results of the postmortem: student died of an overdose of weed, coca cola and essays.
I swear that I read that as 'Choke the Chicken'
But there are plenty of games worth playing for their uniqueness. The problem is that after you play them a few times they are no longer unique.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
This is hardly unique. Chicken chases (or chase the chicken) games go on regularly in rovers (see scouting) in Australia and many other groups also play similar games and have done since I was a child (at least fifteen years ago when I was five :P). The rules are slightly different but the concept is the same...Some one dressed as a chicken runs from a group chasing and those after it can use any means possible to track it down including feather trails, asking the people about, and getting the police to assist them. These chases are usually done in highly populated areas for extra laughs.
I ate your fish.
In the US, we're too lazy too obtain a chicken costume, so we just wear our normal clothes. Even the name "Chicken Chase" is too long -- we just call it "tag."
You're it.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I recently graduated from an art school and at one point was the lead of a similar game collaborative (although we had no programmers...so we had to just create a 3D "animatic" with the art assets). For any students in a similar situation, take this golden rule to heart. Prepare for the majority of your team to slack. Especially if it is an in-class collaborative (What I mean is...no one had to "apply" or "try out" to join the project...they just registered for the class and were plopped into the project). When a passing grade is all that people want, the bare minimum is all you'll be lucky to get out of them.
For those that slack during these projects...don't. The guys/gals that end up with a sleepless semester because they are modeling/uv'ing/texturing/rigging your art assets, while you partied every night, may end up on the employee side of the table during one of your job interviews.
Props to the Chase the Chicken folks for having something playable...some of us fail to get that far... ;)
'Tag' in my experience involves one person chasing whoever is closest/slowest in the group. There's a world of difference, psychologically, between that and having the group chase after a single 'chicken'. For what it's worth, I *love* being the chicken. But I hate being 'it'.
The comments in the article about the shortage of programmers fit right in to news I got yesterday. I teach game programming and graphics at the local community college. I teach the hard core programming class. To try to save the students sanity I use the SDL library, but each student is required to design and code a complete (small) video game during the semester.
This semester my class was canceled for lack of interest. For the first time ever no one signed up for the class. I checked the enrollment in the other classes in the game development curricula and what I see is that the game design classes are full, the game industry classes and production classes are well attended, the game art classes are packed, but the technical classes are empty or nearly empty.
The fact is that it is a lot more fun to do art or design games than it is to code them, and with the number of free, or cheap, game engines out there the need for programmers is reduced. But, if this trend continues it will create a real opportunity for programmers.
Anyway.... if any one in the Austin, Texas area is looking for a hardcore game programming class, let me know, I really like teaching the class. I might still be able to save it.
Stonewolf