Second year Computer Games Development BSc Honours students recently took part in a week-long work-based learning event ‘Studio Live’ to design a new prototype for an existing game.
This year, six teams from the Level 5 Games Development Course were briefed by Splash Damage Games, a Bromley-based game development studio, to build a possible game mechanic for the Stadia game, ‘Outcasters’, a fast-paced multi-player arena-based shooter.
During the ‘Studio Live’ week, the teams met with their mentors daily for feedback and practical advice on developing their design and realising it in a prototype. The teams were then able to demonstrate their ideas and prototypes to all the mentors, at the end of the week for valuable feedback.
Into Games, a not-for-profit organisation, created ‘Studio Live’ to promote careers in games development in schools, further education and universities. In its second year, ‘Studio Live’ enlists game developers to supply a brief and mentor student teams in the design and prototyping of a game mechanic for an already published game.
The funding for the event was provided by Westminster as part of its Work Based Learning strategy, a scheme which embeds working directly within an industry into a course’s core modules. The new Level 5 module Game Studio (2022) is a flagship for Work Based Learning on the Computer Games Development course, along with the Level 4 module Games Enterprise.
Drew Cattanach, Lecturer on the course and on-site organiser, said about the experience: “Studio Live is a fantastic opportunity for ambitious Games Development students to work directly with seasoned games developer and gain valuable insight into the exciting and challenging world of game development.” Drew continued: “It was great to work with Splash Damage Games again and Into Games, who created the Studio Live experience.”
Find out more about Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Westminster.
Related articles
