Project Announcement: Adventure Club Games Puts Museum Goers in the Shoes of Rail Road Workers with the Microsoft Kinect

5-12-2012 Posted by: MikeLikesGames

We are super pumped to announce that our newest game has been released on the masses.

As part of Union Pacific Railroad’s 150th Anniversary we were commissioned to create a Kinect based game that teaches players how difficult it was to build the First American Transcontinental Railroad.  Beginning May 12th 2012, visitors of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum will be able to play our game in the museum’s newly renovated first floor in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Build The Railroad puts you in the shoes of a rail worker during the summer of 1866. Utilizing the Microsoft Kinect players are able to lay down ties, rails, and drive a spike.

For more information on the Union Pacific Railroad Museum please visit  UPRRmuseum.org. Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds for updates throughout the day.

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE

SCREENSHOTS

The Steam Borrowers Program

2-13-2012 Posted by: MikeLikesGames

Steam has been a growing juggernaut since its release in 2003. It has grown from a simple distribution platform for Valve games on Windows based computers to being on both Windows and Mac, a mobile application, and with the release of Portal 2, the ability to connect your Steam account to your PS3. It has completely changed how games are distributed on the personal computer. I no longer purchase retail versions of games that I can get on Steam. They have also introduced many community features to help play and talk about games with others. The only thing I feel that is currently missing from this wondrous system is a way to share and borrow games.

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Game Design: Getting to Where You Want to Be

2-6-2012 Posted by: RobotAdventure

I recently had a conversation with one of my friends whose little brother was studying to be a game designer at University of Michigan and my friend was trying to get him involved in the game development community at Michigan State University. But no matter how much my friend tried, his brother was still not making games. My friend asked me what he should do.

I told my friend that his brother should reconsider his career choice.

Game Design is a tough task, but if you truly enjoy the process, it can be extremely rewarding.
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Studying Art for Fun & Profit or Art Requires Courage

1-30-2012 Posted by: andrewedennis

I have a favorite phrase I like to pass on to students who are interested in being video game artists, this phrase is “anime bullshit”. Now before you power up the flame circuits, let me explain, anime is stupid, wait… no… gimme another chance. Anime and Manga represent a STYLE of illustration, and not even the only Japanese style. If you draw only in one style you not only limit yourself, you actively hurt yourself. If you are reading this, chances are you love video games (or if you are my mom you just love me), and some of the best video games come from Japan. As a result young video gaming nerds have a tendency to become enraptured with Japanese culture; I admit I was once one of these bespeckled youths who found stories of samurai and giant robots fascinating and bushido and tea ceremonies alien and wondrous. It was only natural for my interest in drawing and video games to veer into that territory. So I, like many others of my generation, began to copy my favorite robots and karate fighters. Continue reading →

Innovate! Incubate!

1-23-2012 Posted by: Qtbon

As a small company of energetic young lads we are extremely fortunate to have found our place at East Lansing’s Technology Innovation Center (TIC). The incubator program at the TIC is a three year program aimed at launching small businesses and helping local entrepreneurs. It’s been an amazing place for us to be for the last seven months and we can tell that things will continue to get better.

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Building Zeke The Render Dog(Hackintosh)

1-16-2012 Posted by: MikeLikesGames

I’d like to start by introducing everyone to Zeke The Render Dog, the newest member of the ACG team. Zeke is a dual boot Mac OS X Lion and Windows 7 equivalent to a Mac Pro.

For a while now we have been discussing the desire to have a stand alone machine that we can use for various tasks that would otherwise hog our individual work computers. With this in mind we originally started looking at the Mac Pro line because this would allow us a high end machine that we can develop both in Mac and Windows. However, after doing some research we discovered that the Mac Pro line hasn’t been updated in almost two years and that there is some strong rumors circulating that the line will be phased out later this year. With this in mind we then moved to the idea of a Hackintosh.

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Stop SOPA!

1-12-2012 Posted by: MikeLikesGames

The following comments do not reflect the views of any of Adventure Club Games’ clients. These are the views of Adventure Club Games and Adventure Club Games alone.

If you have been on the Internet at all over the past month you have probably heard some discussions of a bill that is currently going through the House called SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act).

We at Adventure Club Games officially state that we are against SOPA.

This bill is intended to do just what is says, stop online piracy. But it does not stop online piracy it does something much worse, it fundamentally breaks the Internet. In short, it allows big brother to shut down any website that they feel infringes on their IP. This can greatly threaten small businesses like our own, since the companies that will make up big brother are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. The worst part is that this will be accomplished by altering the way domain names work, which can change the way the internet works and is intended.

I highly recommend that you find out more about SOPA and help educate others on how big of an issue this bill is. Here are a few links to learn more and find out what you can do to help stop it:

Game Design’s Bookshelf

1-9-2012 Posted by: RobotAdventure
I have gotten away with a lot in my childhood. No matter what hour my parents found me playing video games, the line “I’m doing research!” seemed to, at least, soften the blow, even before my parents believed you could make a living making video games. Though playing video games as research may seem absurd at times, especially for a child, there is a large amount of truth to the statement.

As designers, our job isn’t always cut-and-dry as the other roles in game development, especially acquiring and improving necessary skills. Want to learn art? Start with drawing. Want to learn programming? Buy a book on the basics of C++. Want to be a game designer? Well, take these 40 unrelated classes ranging from graphic design to architecture and kind of figure it out somewhere in there. But, in truth, a good designer has always been doing their research. When you are learning art, you look at countless paintings from every artist and discuss their techniques. Games are the same way.

Whenever you play a game, you have an opportunity to become a better designer. Every fork in the road, every store menu, and every boss fight is a learning opportunity. Take the time to break down what you are doing, and more importantly why. If there is a fork in the road, ask yourself why you chose the path that you did. If you are frustrated whenever you buy something, figure out the reason. If you figure out the trick to a boss fight, reflect on the rest of the level and how it fits into your progression leading up to that point. Here are some starting points if the process seems vague and silly at times.

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Derezzed – Scaling down your New Years Expectations, for Success!

1-2-2012 Posted by: andrewedennis

As the writer of the first Adventure Club Games blog post of the New Year, I was severely tempted to write a whole post about monitor resolutions, but seeing as one my New Year’s resolution is to make fewer puns, I will deny myself the gratification. New Year’s resolutions represent an opportunity to come clean with ourselves, to be honest about our faults and shortcomings and to try and do something about them. As stand-up comedians from the mid-90s have pointed out, most people don’t follow through with their resolutions. Maybe it’s a lack of will power, or perhaps promises made to one’s self are easy to break. I think it might be because we make the wrong kinds of resolutions. We tend to say we will ‘get in shape’ rather than ‘lose 10 pounds’, we will ‘be better with money’ rather than ‘put together a monthly budget’. As an artist and designer I have this same problem, I tell myself I’m going to be ‘a better artist’ or a ‘more thorough designer’, the problem as you can see, is that these really aren’t goals at all, they are aims. It is a direction you want to head in, not a place you want to end up. Continue reading →

Spartan Remix

12-30-2011 Posted by: Qtbon

Today is another very big day for us. With today’s launch of Spartan Remix we have officially made our first release as a company!  This project has been a great experience for us and we’ve worked with a lot of great people along the way.  All of us at ACG would like to give special thanks and recognition to Scott Westerman and the Michigan State Alumni Association, Brian Winn and the Game for Entertainment and Learning Lab (GEL) at Michigan State University, John Madden and the Michigan State University Marching Band, the Spartan Dischords and everyone else that has helped or impacted this project in any way, shape or form.  Without these people Spartan Remix would not be the beast that it is.  Spartan Remix is a really neat game that we hope you’ll share with people, especially if you bleed green like we do at Adventure Club Games.  Happy New Years from me and the boys and Go Green!