The SMU Guildhall is Southern Methodist’s video game design school located in Plano, Texas. The graduate school is ranked #2 for video game design and is the only program in the world to offer a Masters in Interactive Technology.
As a part of the master’s program, students are required to create their own game. Students here at SMU will have the opportunity to playtest these games on November 29. It’s free, and there will be doughnuts.
We checked in with Marc Mixon, graduate student specializing in production at SMU Guildhall, to tell us a little bit more before the playtest:
SMU art majors who are pursuing a B.F.A. are eligible to apply for a two-part B.F.A./M.I.T in Digital Game Development.
Can you tell us about the students’ games? Are they first person narrative? Web-based or console?
They are all 2-D mobile games built for android tablets in the Unity 5 engine. Each game is unique and at this stage in development quite a bit can change, so that is little tough to answer right now.
How long have the students been working on them?
2-3 months. That includes pitching the initial concept on paper all the way to a final product complete with marketing materials like posters and logos. It is the first of three games that students will design as part of a team during their master’s program. Team includes programmers, artists, level designers, and producers.
Why is testing an important part of the process, within the curriculum?
Testing is crucial to game development, and SMU Guildhall prides itself on a curriculum that simulates what development is like in the industry. Testing identifies usability problems i.e. when players don’t understand how a game works. It helps developers discover which mechanics are the most fun, so they can allocate their resources to focus on those areas. Bug testing is the aspect that people are most familiar with; it’s part of the quality assurance process to make sure the game functions correctly. Although there are many facets to testing, its overall goal is to improve the end user’s experience.
