(This is a repost of a news article from Full-Sail’s Propeller Website)

The tale of Mr. Apple Head
What happens when you shut 16 Game Development students in a room for 24 hours with plenty of computers and ask them to create a game? Apparently, the answer is: Mr. Apple Head, a working game about a humanoid-apple looking for his body parts.
That’s what came of a recent experiment, sponsored by the Game Development department. The 24-hour creative exercise was inspired by the experiments of Jenova Chen, creative director and co-founder of thatgamecompany, the makers of flOw. (Newcomer Chen was propelled into the game industry spotlight after winning the International Game Festival Student Showcase in 2006, and after leaving the development team of Spore to found his own successful company in 2007.)
“They’ve done a lot of those game play experiments where they see what happens in 24 hours,” said Course Director Keyvan Acosta, the Game Development faculty member who organized the event.
Acosta and some of the students call this type of experiment a “play mine,” since the participants are metaphorically “mining for fun.”
You might think that volunteering to pull an all-nighter (a 24-hour all-nighter) wouldn’t be something that students in an already-challenging program would relish. However, Acosta and the students who participated beg to differ. “It’s actually incredibly fun,” explained Acosta.
Play Mine Rules: You Make Them
The world of Mr. Apple Head takes place on a playground, where the hapless Frankenstein-like apple is roaming a playground looking for his arms and legs. In this game, the babies on the playground are the bad guys.
So how did they produce the game in 24 hours? They weren’t assigned to create it; Mr. Apple Head simply emerged.
“You start with a loose form, and you find form,” said Acosta, who described himself as the go-to person for assistance. “They organize themselves – I help by giving them a little bit of structure.”
The students chose where on the team they wanted to participate – such as designing the graphics (art), coding (programming) or organizing and managing (production). “One of the guys that did the art – the reason he did the art was he’s always programming. He just wanted to really see himself in it,” said Acosta. “He [won’t] have an opportunity in the whole degree to [try his hand at art]. He wanted to do something completely different.”
The Benefits of Experimenting with Play
According to Acosta and Program Director Rob Catto, this type of creative exercise has several benefits.
“One of the things we’re finding in the industry is that studios are looking for people that do outside stuff outside the realm of their projects,” said Game Development Program Director Rob Catto.
Acosta said it also gives students experience that they can’t get in class. “The rules that emerge are similar to what happens in the industry – what we teach in the class, but they happen [in an experiment] out of necessity,” said Acosta. “It’s a way for them to see that the training is an actual efficient method.”
“One of the things that I was striving for was for them to observe themselves – what it is that they do when a grade’s not attached to something and how many of those lessons that they’ve learned (good habits and bad habits) in the classroom.”
Alas, you probably won’t find Mr. Apple Head available for download anytime soon. Another rule of the play mine is that it is finite.
“When it ends, it ends – that’s the end of the life of that project. We want each activity to have closure,” said Acosta. Meanwhile, the play mine will go on, in different forms.
“It’s an umbrella for different activities that hopefully will create student participation, student awareness, competition and experimentation.”
- Christine Baker
Full Sail, News | No Comments »