Here are some games we made for fun and learning. We feel that we cannot honestly call ourselves “experts in the field” if we have never made a single game… (May be you don’t feel the burn, but we do.)
Saving Adryanee (2007)
The first major game (a Neverwinter Night mod) created by my research team was Saving Adryanee. The origin of Saving Adryanee began as a short story we created per Bioware’s NWN story competition guidelines – limited to 3 characters in a 4×4 world. The short story was subsequently expanded into a short game called Arecibo Valley by then doctoral student J. H. Byun. The game, which deals with the science learning concept of Neutralization (Acid + Base) was showcased at AECT in 2006.
In 2007, we were motivated to submit a serious game to the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge competition sponsored by I/ITSEC (world’s largest military simulation conference) at Orlando, FL. The story line for Arecibo Valley was beef up by me and Byun, and turned into a 7-area game called Saving Adryanee (worth about 1-hour of gameplay). Saving Adryanee was our first STEM game to teach middle school Health Science, covering topics such as the Vitamin A, B, C and the neutralization of acid and base.This was the first time I lived as game developer and had to undergo a 72-hour period with very little sleep to meet the submission deadline. We were one of the 12 Finalists who got a chance to showcase our game during the 2007 I/ITSEC conference. It was a blast!
Zoink
The first game made by my team when I first started at SIU was a text-based game called Zoink. I was experimenting with some early concept of Information Trails and data visualization. It was a rip-off based on the first scene of Zork and it served its purpose.
