University’s gaming students hit the big screens at Franklins Gardens

The next generation of video game creators put their skills to test this week during the University of Northampton’s gaming challenge.

Taking place twice a year, this week’s challenge was titled Pam Fest and took place in the cinch stadium, home of the Northampton Saints Rugby Team.

Students were given just three days to make a multiplayer game from scratch that could be played on the stadium’s big screens on a match day by spectators.

Team Bernie’s Bulldog won the best overall game.

Games Art, Design and Programming Lecturer Vikaas Mistry said the winning team produced a well put together game that was fun, had a good sense of progression and game flow, and which also looked great on the big screens.

He added: “This gives students a great career development opportunity, it can go on their CVs and they can use it in their portfolios. It’s also an excellent point of discussion during job interviews when talking about working as team under strict deadlines.

“Students also claim they learn an incredible amount during the three days, it’s voluntary and doesn’t count towards their final grade so they can afford to take some risks and try out things that wouldn’t normally come up during their course.”

Rueben Miller, Lead Programmer for Bernie’s Bulldog said they adopted a simple concept that everyone in a stadium would grasp quickly and based their games around the street game British Bulldog.

Players could select characters based on the real-life Saints Team and Bernie, the Saints’ mascot was the bulldog trying to stop players from getting from one side of the stadium to the other.

Rueben added: “This was a massive opportunity; we wouldn’t normally get to see our work on such a large scale and see the real potential for expansion for something like this.”

Pam Fest is the latest gaming challenge which has also seen students creating games using a light gun, and last summer students were challenged to create a game which would work on the tower at the University’s power station (The Tower of Power).

Vikaas thanked The Saints for hosting the event which he hopes to expand and would welcome approaches from potential sponsors and partners – Vikaas.Mistry@northampton.ac.uk.

• Play all the Pam Fest games

To find out more about Games Art, Design and Programming courses at the University of Northampton and the wide range of other opportunities, visit the gaming subject hub.