Getting to Know the Game Development Network and GDN Challenge

September 25, 2019 Church Lieu

This past Thursday, a crowd of students crammed into room 209 of Montgomery Hall for the first Game Development Network (GDN) meeting of the school year. GDN is a collaborative network of students from various majors, who come together to learn from each other and develop games.

One of the core, enduring features of the club is the GDN Challenge: making anything from concept art to a playable prototype of a game based on a design prompt. The Challenge remains, but the club as a whole has been vastly overhauled for the new year.

The Club

President Dixon Dubow presented the core goals of GDN as follows: 1) to advance its members understanding of the industry and lifestyle of making games, 2) to prepare students for the professional world by building skills and portfolio, and 3) to encourage collaboration with other departments such as sound design and animation.

Towards the first and second goals, GDN regularly hosts speakers from various aspects of the game development industry. This quarter (Fall 2019) GDN will host Luis Brito, a level designer and scripter at 2k Games. In the past, GDN has To address the goal of collaboration, GDN will now hold open work sessions most Thursday nights. Students from any major with an interest in game design can now bring their work to the Open Session meetings and work alongside their peers.

Schedule of GDN meetings in Fall 2019: “O” stands for Open Session, and “SP” stands for Special Presentation.

In Week 7, GDN will host a brand new event called Jam Stomp. Jam Stomp is a practice event in preparation for Global Game Jam in Winter Quarter, for newcomers to get introduced and for veterans to sharpen their skills. Like the GDN Challenge, Jam Stomp will challenge participants to make a game based on a prompt, but the time frame will be constricted to just a few days.

The Week 8 meeting will feature a presentation about Game Developers Conference (GDC), which will run from March 16-20 this year. It will cover the process for getting into GDC through SCAD by manning the SCAD booth, and review some skills and strategies for students to make the best use of the opportunity.

Week 9 will be the conclusion of this quarter’s GDN Challenge. For more information on the Challenge, keep reading.

The Challenge

The club has hosted the GDN Challenge since its first year, but this year the structure has changed. Instead of having three themes (Main Theme, Music, and Culture), the Challenge now has one required theme, and four optional “diversifiers” which may be incorporated. For this quarter’s challenge, the main theme is “Growth”.

Note: “Coding” and “Design” are switched. “No Direct Movement” is the actual Design diversifer, and vice versa.

Interested students have until Thursday of Week 9 to work on a project which incorporates some or all of these themes. You may work individually or in teams, and can submit anything from concept art to a playable prototype. This year’s grand prize is an $80 Visa Gift Card, with several $25 Amazon gift cards available as runner-up prizes.

The Game Development Network meets every Thursday at 8pm in Montgomery Hall room 209, unless otherwise noted. Follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/SCAD.GDN/ for updates. Please note that SCAD faculty, alumni, and industry recruiters are active in the GDN group.