About Three Thing Game

Three Thing Game is a student development competition that we run in the department. It originated with an exercise in 2010 called Destruction Golf in which a number of student teams had a week to create a game. We ended the week with a 24 hour development session where the games were finished and a winner judged. The event was the basis of a really good article in 360 magazine. You can find out more here.

We give each team of students three “things” around which they can base a game. The things are suggested on the web site in the weeks leading up to the event. We have students from all years taking part, in the October 2011 event we have around half the teams from the first year. The competition is as much about project management and planning as it is about game design, coding and assets. An approach based on getting something working and then iteratively adding features has been found to be much more successful than those based around a “grand plan” with lots of “great ideas”.

You can keep coming back to this site to find out more about the competition, and how the teams are doing.

Three Thing Game “Things” Picked

[Warning: this is a graphics heavy post. But worth it]

These are the things, who knows what magic they hold.

Three Thing Game October 2011 started today. We have 25 teams and 75 things to give out.  So let’s get on with it.

 

Ergo Studios: Scott Smith, John Firmin and William Mason
”Giant Sniper of Doom”

 

Tactical Nuclear Penguins: Josh Crowther, Alex Beamer and Dan Burns
”Funky Robot goes underground” 

I chose this weekend over Battlefield 3: Lindsay Cox, Devon Hansen, David Hart and Michael Bumby
”Gun toting volcano in space”

Double A's: Anthony Quinn and Aaron Ridge
”Extreme hamster in the graveyard”

Bottled Games: Steve Muir, Leigh Boynton, Simon Johnston and Marc Cutsforth
”Fairground mouse jungle quest”

ALE: Ermin Huremovic, Luke Young, Anthony Church and Adrian Smith
”Jelly werewolf ghost story”

Drop Table Team;: 'Tom Forbes, Joe Smith, Ben Coveney and Mat Bajer
”Skateboarding Chicken Hospital”

Team Thunderhead: Toby Russell, Rob Bedding, Jonathon Rich and Tom Proctor
”Skeleton Fridge at School”

The Honey Badgers: Keelan Jenkinson, Jacob North, Scott Sanderson and Bektas Ozer
”Alien Dog with a Banjo”

Smoking Hashtables: Sam Cutler, Dan Endersby, Louis Deane and Alex Mann
”Bearded Frankenstein Fighter”

Aeonian Arts: Arron Martin, Willliam Grey, Sam Healand and Caine Martin
”Faster than Light  Zombie Desktop”

The Four Horsemen: Nick Case, Alex Hatton, James Czerwitt-Hampshire and Mark Dyer
”Heatseeking Vampire of Stealth”

Fez Productions: Heather MacDougal, Thomas McPherson, Matthew Narey and  Miles McGann
”Reality TV Star Pies Crypt”

Rage Against the Turing Machine: James Taylor, Joe Wilson, Dominic Rihaldi and Josh Twigg
”Spandex Banker Overkill”

The Unlikely Alliance: Scott Neil, Daniel Karkin, Waseem Akhtar and Alex Pringle
”Summoner Bomb Speedboat”

The Infamous Two Sirs: Christophe Lionet and Robert Marshall
”Tomb Ninja Travelodge”

Troll: Robert Campbell, Tim Chadwick, Lawrence Worrell and Samantha Henstock
”Bungalow Dragon of Death”

What's That Coming Over the Hill: Joshua Moon, Andrew Flatters, Abdul Muzammil and Emily Bradshaw
”Cheese Penguin Apocalypse”

Vapour: Johannes Van Rig, Ben Outram, Steven Bul and lTom Kingston
”Magic Mum Comic”

4Play: Alex Chard, Sam Harrison, Shuef Khan and Niall Hammond-Blackburn
”Disco Killer Doodle”

Ad-Hoc Productions: William Dann, David Armstrong, Nathan Hickling and Katherine Fielding
”Orchestral Assassin  Butcher”

Team Awesome: Stephen Foster, Sean Mackan, Callum Elshout and Danny Alan
”Frankfurter  Badger  Canal

Scribble: Alex Tanser, Luke Harrington, Steve Davis and Ben Allison
”Curry Dinosaur City”

Nerd-Tacular: Grant Lodge, Codie Collinge, James Croft and Tim Roth
”Long haired mummy on safari”

Jaybodanto: Jamie Crossman, Robert Bailey, Thomas Smith and Daniel Moorhouse
”Galactic Vegetable Dragon”

Three Thing Game Rides Again

We are running another Three Thing Game development at the end of October. These are open to any Hull University students who fancy having a go at some intense game development.

The "things" will be assigned to the teams on Monday 24th of October, with an overnight development session from 29th to 30th of October. We even get an extra hour thanks to the move from BST to GMT, which might prove crucial.

Registration is open now, you can find a registration form here.

We are searching out some bumper prizes for the winning team.

We are also looking for “things” that we can use for the games. Please append any thing ideas that you have to this post. Each team gets three "things" that they have to base their game on. Last time the winners got "Warrior Koalas on Mars". Who knows what the future will bring....

Three Thing Game Judging Videos

If you want to see what the teams came up with at the end of the game event, and how well students can function after sleep deprivation and lots of caffeine and sugar, then they are all now available on youtube. Just search for threethinggame These videos are in High Definition, as I’m sure you will spot.

We had Paul Ross from Criterion Games here today (they are the studio behind titles such as Burnout) to give a talk on game development and chat with our students. This was the cue for lots of scrambling for Windows Phone devices so that some of our team members could show him the things they had made during the competition. By all accounts he was very impressed, which is nice.

Anyone who missed out on taking part in the competition this time round needn’t worry. Three Thing Game will be back next semester.

Three Thing Game Judging at Platform Expo

 
Yours truly with “To Be Confirmed”, whose take on “Warrior Koalas on Mars” got them a Windows Phone each. Good work guys. Now put it in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

We put 60 or so bleary eyed students on a double decker bus and drove them down to Platform Expo for the judging.

They must be judges, they’ve got clipboards…

All the group watched the judging videos (which will be online soon) and asked a bunch of questions about the entries.  At noon we announced the winners. The students then had an hour or so to explore the expo (or collapse somewhere) and then the trusty bus brought them back to campus.

Every team stayed the course this time, and we had playable content from all of them. Some of the teams did amazing things with some truly tricky starting points and they stuck to their subjects really well. I’m terrifically impressed with all the students, who served as ambassadors for the university at every level. We even had a bunch of volunteers who had given up a chunk of their Sunday to come and demonstrate the 3DS to people at the expo.

Jon and I did talks about 3D displays and Kinect that were well received and well attended (although I’m not sure how coherent we were only having had 3 hours sleep in the last 36).

Great fun, if exhausting. I’ve put a load of pictures up on Flickr (search for the tag threethinggame) and I’ll be uploading the judging videos on Monday.