Introduction

The Game Development Society at the University of Leeds was created two years ago because of the lack of game course at the University. As part of the Union, the society acts as a forum for interested students. We support our members with their portfolios, we show off new engines, have talks, trips to IGDA meet-ups and fun socials. We thought that it was great to learn about games development, but without applying what we discuss then there wouldn't be much point. This brings us to our Community Game; NinjaSticks. Our community game enables us as a society to bring together our members and their talents.

The society is run through a committee and sub-committee structure in conjunction with member participation. We structured the society according to the Union’s constitution which we have to adopt, laying out the rules and regulations for the committee members. The three key players are the Treasurer, Secretary and President; the latter has been my position for the last two years.

The early stages of the society were concentrated on getting members and support from the industry, the latter of which was mainly financial. We had some difficulties finding sponsoring, but we received good general support from many companies. Only one company gave us financial support, with the donation of £352 from Rik Heywood’s Cipher Engine. Industry support came mainly through GameRepublic, whom have introduced us to the great guys at Creative North, Rockstar Leeds, Team 17, BlueFX and many more. The Microsoft Academic team has been one of our strongest supporters too, helping us develop most of our events. Through Microsoft, we hosted a launch party for Halo 2 featuring the Xbox LAN Party roadkit and as the main prize was a crystal Xbox! We also helped with MS’ Gen'05 event which was a great day, where Microsoft promoted all areas of technology. Since it was in Leeds, many universities made the trip to come and check it out.

A Halo 2 LAN Party

The first year we ran, we had a total membership of 40 students, this year we have over 103. We can estimate that approximately 15 are really active members throughout these two years. Here’s a bit about the current demographic of our members:

• 94 men, 9 women; that’s 91.2% men.
• 33 Paid members, 70 Non-Paid members; that’s 32% paid out of the total membership.
• Age range from 18-26.
• Mostly undergraduates, but does include some postgraduates.
• Members’ course included physics, art, music, computer studies, international relations, English, media and producing and aviation with management.

The Community game NinjaSticks uses the Torque Game Engine. The best description of the game would be a cel-shaded stick figure beat-'em-up with a twist! It really is something to see! As our first project, the visual style was clear and yet gave us the freedom to expand in areas that the committee wanted to push. The way we structured the community game, was not specifically to produce a fully working game, but to get students and members involved in something that has the potential to do so but puts them in a game development environment in which they have to get used to the technical requirements, the dedication, the quality and research. To promote this we also held "Devathons," a concept which was taken from the Quake3Fortress team (now SplashDamage). Everyone who can brings their own computer to the president's house and works over the course of a weekend or three days on the game. This not only facilitated the development of the game but got everyone working together and sharing their knowledge, although this sometimes slipped into some good LAN games.

To run the society, we have set it up as if we ran a virtual team; our website being the main focus point for the members. Using the Geeklog CMS system we provided our members with news, forums, a bug tracker, RSS feeds, picture gallery and file manager. Our members can also write in stories and contribute to nearly all aspects of the website. Yet to further benefit this setup, we ran SVN to update our Community Game and let everyone remain on the same page. This type of setup is a must for any virtual team/society involved in development as it allows members to access everything under one login and stay up to date with all the society’s actions.