Games and Game Design (BA)

Text on screen: Program Spotlight: Games and Game Design (BA)

[Footage of game being designed by student on computer screen]

Student Brian Pham: Game Design at Webster is both doing the development, coding and art and also designing video games. What stories should we tell? What mechanics should we make? So we kind of encompass everything at Webster, and it's all under the Game Design program, and it's just the art of making video games.

Student Jon Honeycutt: Gaming definitely pulls together all sorts of other arts and visual media, cinematography, sound design, and you have your 2D art, 3D art. It all comes together and coalesces in an interactive media.

[Footage of Webster’s film soundstage, audio studio and students working on storyboards and game design]

Text on screen: Cutting-Edge Facilities: Professional Labs Built for Learning and Collaboration

Student Andrea Hammond: As a game major, the School of Communications makes it really easy to help me collaborate with film majors, audio majors and animators.

[Footage of Andrea working in Webster’s film studio with other students]

I work with film teams to film in front of the LED video wall, and it's very, very amazing to work with them and you learn so much. And now that we can get that, it's so cool to see everyone's work in a final product, be it a film, an audio project or a game.

Honeycutt: The new big gigantic LED screen, all the new computers in the computer lab over here, the new sound design lab downstairs.

[Footage of Webster’s various media studios, including film and audio studios, with students working on projects}

Pham: So you can encompass more than just games, but you also do a lot of game making.

Text on screen: Hands-On Experience: Learning Industry Standard Game Design from Expert Faculty

Pham: So here at Webster, you learn Unity and Unreal Engine, the two biggest industry standard software for game development. You have a lot of classes where you're very free and you're very open. You just get the space to just make things.

Hammond: My professors for the Game Design department are all really, really fun to work with and they all are very much specialized.

[Footage of Hammond working with a professor]

I feel that whenever you ask them questions, they can offer you their own experiences, as well as advice on how to continue to further your own career.

Honeycutt: Some of the professors have been in the gaming industry for decades, so there's a lot of like knowledge over a wide variety of gaming topics. I know that I can learn from and that I want others to learn from.

[Footage of Honeycutt working on a video game with an instructor overseeing]

Hammond: I think the unique thing about this gaming program is the sense of community you have. You're not really competing with anyone. You're more or less just pushing each other to grow your own skills and toolsets.

[Footage of Hammong collaborating with other game design students]

Pham: I've made several games at Webster and each time I've made a game I could see myself getting better. After spending so much time practicing here and having that space, I feel like I can go out and I would be able to learn anything I don't know and just keep making games.

Text on screen: Webster University, webster.edu/soc

[Fade to black]

[Beginning with a black display, text appears on screen using a glitch transition.]

Text on screen: WEBSTER GAME DESIGN

[Electronic dance music begins slowly, ramping up to full volume.]

[The text on screen fades as a first-person shooter video game appears, the player making their way down a dark, futuristic hallway, shooting at obstacles.]

[The music continues as the video begins to cut to 3-5 second intervals of different video games:

1. Using the entire screen as field of view, a laser brings a coffee mug closer and then smashes it on the ground.
2. A track-and-field platform game located in ASTRO KITTY STADIUM with the player jumping over hurdles.
3. An old, cliché two person fighting game with players’ HP draining after each hit — one wins as they knock the other out ‘KO’.
4. A colorful platform game with ascending levels where the player blows up objects for items inside or to destroy an enemy turret.
5. A humanoid shaped black figure runs around searching a neutral-colored area.
6. A player-controlled airplane fights against other jets and enemies from a bird’s eye view of a pink, purple and blue city.
7. A shooting gallery type game, the player controls a space craft trying to avoid oncoming asteroids.
8. A racing game with a futuristic jet flying through a desert map taking harsh turns and drifting.
9. Another shooting gallery, an object with two arms moves side to side and twists to avoid oncoming spheres.
10. A “shoot ‘em up” game, the spaceship centered in the screen produces a trail as it continually turns, eventually capturing an enemy ship.
11. Another shoot ‘em up game, the player is a stationary child shooting at zombies with a slingshot in a school setting.]

[The example clips of student-made video games speeds up, leaving approximately two seconds between each cut.]

[A colorful platform jumping game with a dwindling timer cuts to another platform game, this time with two lives and no timer.]

[The video changes to a side-scrolling game with a player walking on a path using arrow keys before cutting back to another platform game as the player jumps and shoots lasers at a large horse-like enemy.]

[Another first-person shooter appears, using a scope to see through a dumpster in a badly lit alley and fades into a second first-person shooter. This game has a handgun as the player approaches a skeleton and shooting at it.]

[The skeleton begins to move toward the player who moves backward. The skeleton then glows red and flies through the field-of-view as the game transitions to a black screen.]

[Text appears on screen with a glitch transition as the music fades out.]

Text on screen: WEBSTER-GAME-DESIGN.ITCH.IO

[The text disappears using another glitch transition and the video ends with a black screen.]