The Independent Games Festival celebrates independent and student video games. In this series, GameCareerGuide is talking to some of the students who have submitted games to the IGF student competition, like Andre Clark, whose game Minor Battle is played across 14 screens.

Game title: Minor Battle

School: University of Southern California

Game description: Minor Battle is an immersive 2D multiplayer platform game displayed on multiple screens, requiring players to actively engage in physical play and movement in order to complete team-based objectives in the virtual space. The gameplay incorporates multiple game modes, each with a varying degree of intense action-driven combat that plays out in a fun, fast-paced, and charming environment.

Minor Battle creates an immersive playground experience and examines social behavior in a competitive and cooperative gaming environment. Players venture into a room in which they are surrounded by the game world and are immersed in virtual gameplay. The goal is for players to intrinsically bond their presence within the physical space with the presence of their avatar in the virtual space through physical motion and real-world communication. The design focus is creating systems where distinct natural behaviors emerge from each player.

GameCareerGuide: Tell us how Minor Battle came to be.

Andre Clark: The first ideas for Minor Battle came from a class assignment. We were asked to make a panorama that would stretch across 14 projector screens in USC's Zemeckis Media Lab. I thought it would be fun to hand draw this panorama as a battle between two stick figure armies.

The two images above are actually the one long panorama Clark describes. The full image was too long to show in full here.

After seeing this image engulf the room's screens, I instantly wondered how it would feel to control one of these characters while all of my friends are controlling the others. But that wasn't enough. I also wanted to find out what it would feel like to play this game with multiple players across multiple screens in the same room. From here, the core ideas behind Minor Battle were born.

GCG: What was your goal in developing the game?

AC: The development of the game was initially intended to be a personal project that I would work on in my free time. However, during this time I was also required to lock down a thesis topic for my graduate program. After seeing some potential for this project through small prototypes, I decided to pursue Minor Battle as my thesis.

GCG: What do you think is the game's greatest asset? What sets it apart from other games in the IGF?

AC: Aside from the physical presentation of the game, Minor Battle's greatest draw will be the social interactions that arise between players. I've found that players tend to communicate more to both their teammates and their opponents during the process of moving around the multiple screens, both physically and verbally.

After playing the game, you may not remember the names of the other players, but you will remember moments you shared with those other players. These moments can vary from being shoulder-to-shoulder with someone as you both try to complete an objective, to having another player attempt to use his or her body to block you from one of the screens to gain an advantage.

A huge goal of this game is to create unique social experiences that you wouldn't normally get while sitting in your bedroom playing other multiplayer games. Adding the physical area as a play space really brings out different means of communication amongst players.

GCG: What drew you to develop for multi-screen play?

AC: Last year we had a class, Experiments in Interactivity, and in this class I developed an interest with interactive physical spaces, such as interactive walkways or floors. I wanted to create a game experience that made the physical space as important as the virtual space.

Of the many ideas that came up, I really liked the idea of creating an arena of sorts using screens that would produce a dual conflict, both in the game and in the physical space itself.

In this same class, I worked with a few of my classmates to create a 3D space shooter that used multiple screens. This game was created for the same room with 14 projectors on three of its walls. Each monitor was essentially a window looking out into space and, there were multiple PCs in the room that acted as the various stations that controlled the ship.