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Students get their game on

Students interested in behind-the-scenes creation of video games should consider joining the new Video Game Development Association on campus.

The VGDA, which saw more than 80 students at its first meeting in March, aims to simulate a real-life video game development group comprised of students who create their own ideas, VGDA president and senior marketing major Aaron Lane said.

“Video game development is a huge passion of mine,” Lane said. “I think video games are very fun and that they bring people together.”

Lane said he got the idea to create VGDA after noticing a “high demand” for a video game development organization on campus.  He said a lot of students were talking about it, so he began talking to professors about the idea.

He said professors have begun taking the organization more seriously and are getting more involved with the club since the Associated Students Inc. approved its formation.

At VGDA’s second meeting on March 25, Christopher Cain, a professor in the Department of Film and Electronic Arts, brought his entire class to the meeting, Lane said.

“I think both students and professors wanted it,” Lane said.

He said the organization’s purpose is to help students “make it in the real world” by helping them build social and life skills as they work with others to develop a video game.

“Having your name as a credit on a video game is a really big deal,” Lane said. “It [shows] a level of experience and skill set.”

He said one of employers’ biggest complaints is that most graduates in the gaming industry don’t know how to work in teams.

“They have poor communication skills, and they’re not very good at working in a cross-functional team-based environment,” Lane said.

During the first half of the year, members of the club are divided into teams of six or more to make small games, Lane said.

The teams are comprised of programmers, content creators, writers, designers, artists and sound engineers, Lane said.

“The natural leaders will float to the top,” he said.

Lane said that teams can work remotely and are not required to work in the same room. Because there may be 20 people working on one thing at the same time, VGDA uses tools like Dropbox or GitHub to share “assets” such as sound bits, art or scripts, Lane said.

One of VGDA’s annual goals is to make at least one polished game, free of any glitches or bugs, ready for shipping, Lane said.

Once the small games are created at the end of the semester, the members will present their games and ideas for a bigger project the following semester, Lane said.

There are no membership fees to join the organization, but students must use their own computers to develop the games. Lane said the organization does, however, plan to apply for funding through ASI grants and hopefully sell a game for profit in the future.

Senior film major Steve Chou, who is applying for the VGDA’s archivist position, said he likes the organization because it compares to professor Adam Moore’s video game writing and design class — the first class of its kind.

Because it is an experimental class, Chou said, Moore wants to collaborate with the computer science department to develop a video game.

Chou and Lane both said that although they expect to graduate soon, they want to stay involved in the organization.

“I started this all by myself,” Lane said.  “I’ve never really been involved in school, but when I got to Cal State Long Beach [I thought,] ‘It’d be really cool to have a video game development studio on campus.’”

VGDA will hold its third meeting Tuesday at 4 p.m. in Psychology building, Room 150, where members will vote for officers. The meeting is open to all students.

In addition, Lane has set up an online leadership application for anyone interested in applying for an executive position in the organization.

“No one has to know how to develop a video game … That’s the great thing about this organization,” Lane said.

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