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October 15, 2003
October 2003 Meeting Report
Just under 20 of us got together in Southfield for the October meeting. We met at the NextGen Education offices
in Southfield. This month, Calvin Vette was to talk about the Game Developer series of classes they will be
offering. Before getting started, we all grabbed some pizza and pop.
After a brief introduction, Calvin started off talking a bit about the PS2 dev scene. He covered some of the
different techniques that developers can use to gain access to the PS2. He even showed a few PS2 demos put together
by different people in the demo scene. Calvin then gave an overview of the various course offerings at NextGen.
He talked about the various tools and game engines they will be using, topics covered by classes, and future plans to
integrate their game programming classes better with some of the graphics arts programs at local colleges and
universities. Calvin also discussed things like venture capital, and what NextGen is doing to try and get investors
interested in funding local area game development companies.
In the Q&A portion, Calvin discussed funding/scholarship options for people interested in taking classes there. He
answered a few questions about the goals of their program and helping students build a resume/portfolio that would give
them an edge getting a job in the market.
Next up, Brian Winn started with a brief overview of the Ernest Adams
Game Design Workshop held a few Sundays prior in Lansing. He also talked briefly about the upcoming
Computer Game Technology Conference taking place next April in Toronto, and the
student game competition that will be taking place.
Next, Brian moved on to the "Made in Michigan" segment of the evening, demonstrating the game Fantastic Food Challenge.
Developed at Michigan State University by the Communication Technology Laboratory in cooperation with the Michigan Family
Nutrition Program (and a few other groups), Fantastic Food Challenge was an attempt at creating
interactive game based learning tools. The goal of the game was to teach adults in low-income households the
necessary knowledge and skills to allow them to make healthy and cost-conscious decisions for feeding their families,
and also to get their children interested and more involved in the process.
Fantastic Food Challenge was developed in a game show format featuring 4 different mini-games, with styles ranging from Tetris to a game
that looks like it came right out of The Price is Right. Each mini-game teaches a different skill, such as identifying
foods and classifying them into food groups, determining the proper storage location for different foods to minimize
spoilage, calculating cost-per-serving to find the best bargain, or identifying ingredients that can be used to make
different meals.
Before wrapping things up, we had 2 books from the New Riders Games Series to give away, courtesy of New Riders
Publishing. The books we had to give away were:
"Developing Games in Java" by David Brackeen
"Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming" by Daniel Sanchez-Crespo
Our first winner would have been Alex Kerfoot, but since he was one of the winners last meeting, he was kind enough
to volunteer to step down and share the wealth. As a result, our lucky winners this month were Casey Meekhof and
Jim Kennedy. Congratulations to the winners.
After the drawing, we finished off the meeting with some more socializing, while Calvin showed a few more PS2 bits
and copied the PS2-Independence patch onto memory cards for a few interested individuals. Before we knew it, another meeting was over.
We were glad to see everyone who attended. We hope to see even more for our December meeting. Plans are still tentative, but we hope to have
it in Ann Arbor coinciding with the Student Game Showcase like last year...keep your eyes and ears open for details.
The chapter coordinators:
Rich Elswick
Ron Frazier
Brian Winn
Posted by BrianWinn at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)