Three years ago, Trinity Western University professors Alma Barranco-Mendoza and Kevin Schut stepped far beyond their comfort zone of scholarship to begin an exciting new project.

Schut is an assistant professor in the communications department who normally focuses on media studies and Barranco-Mendoza is an assistant professor in the computing science department who has worked on such diverse projects as genome mapping, e-learning systems for those with autism and probabilistic modeling of a population’s risk of diabetes. Back in the summer of 2005, they decided to leave their conventional areas of expertise and team up with a group of students to create a computer game.

“We started talking about it in August, 2005,” Schut said. “We got really excited about that conversation and said, ‘Hey, we should do this!’”

Schut said it was a completely new experience for both professors.

“Alma had managed software projects before in the professional world, but she’d never made a game,” he said. “I had studied games for seven to eight years, but had never made one.”

After hundreds of hours of work by themselves and 24 students, their project came to fruition last week when they made the resulting game, Label: Rise of Band, available to the public. An early brainstorming session resulted in the group’s decision to produce a turn-based strategy game about running an independent record label, a concept Schut said was popular with the students involved.

“It’s all about indie labels fighting the forces of corporate rock,” he said.

Schut said his studies of video games and their role in culture aroused his interest in creating a game, as he wanted to examine them from a producer’s perspective to complement his vantage point as an observer.

“I really wanted to be able to focus on the production process: what is it like from the inside?” he said. “I’ve always loved production and it was sort of an unfulfilled desire of mine to do something like that.”

Schut said he and Barranco-Mendoza decided to create an interdisciplinary course in game production, bringing together students from a wide range of faculties to produce the game. However, he said that was easier said than done, as they had to clear everything with the university administration and various departments, as well as complete a substantial amount of paperwork.

“Alma and I spent about a year pursuing the various administrative things we needed to have in place,” he said. “It was a very complicated and drawn-out process.”

Schut said the administration was supportive of their idea, but many of the complications that had to be worked out arose from the unique nature of their proposal.

“We had no precedent for what we were doing,” he said.

The game design began late last spring and carried on throughout the summer and fall, where Schut and Barranco-Mendoza worked with their group of students on brainstorming ideas, planning the game’s features and storyline and coming up with an idea of what programming would be needed.

The students involved all brought their own areas of expertise to the table: computing science students worked on the programming portions, while art students created original artwork for the game and music students recorded an original soundtrack. Communications students wrote the game’s storyline, and business students came up with the marketing and distribution models.

The group kicked the actual production into high gear early this year, which Schut said took a lot of effort due to their decision to build the game from the ground up instead of using a pre-existing engine.

“January was when the rubber hit the road,” he said. “It was an

enormous challenge, never really knowing if we were on track.”

Schut said the project gave him a new appreciation for how much work goes into the creation of the video games he analyzes.

Schut, Barranco-Mendoza and the students involved banded together under the name of Bonus Marks Entertainment, and released the game last week as a complete download on their website. Schut said the game will be available by donation over the summer, and the group plans to release an enhanced edition before Christmas, potentially as a retail product.

Schut said he and Barranco-Mendoza are planning to do the project over again starting in the summer of 2009, when they’ll begin work on a new game.

“The idea was all along that if this was successful, it would turn into a regular project,” he said.

Schut said the project is an important new initiative for the university, as the video game industry plays a large role in today’s society.

“It’s a key part of our culture now,” he said.

Schut said the students involved could get even more than just course credit and valuable hands-on experience in design: if the game becomes successful enough, they’ll share in the profits. Seventy per cent of any profits from the game will be reinvested in the program with 30 per cent going to the university as a whole, but if the game sells over 5,000 units, 10 per cent of the profits will go to the students.

“It’s always possible with Internet games that it could become a sleeper hit,” he said. “If it becomes a real success, some of the money will go back to the participants.”

David Somers-Harris, a fourth-year computing science student who worked on the game for up to 20 hours each week as a developer and project manager, said he enjoyed working on the game because it produced a useful product at the end, unlike many typical computing science assignments.

“I thought it was totally awesome,” he said. “A lot of the computing science assignments are sort of useless. It’s something you can use and play with once you’re done.”

Label: Rise of Band is available for download from www.labelriseofband.com.