While playing as Mario or Master Chief, most kids were just concerned with getting past the boss level. The seniors in Columbia’s Game Design Department however, were thinking about the people behind the game.

They weren’t concerned with running and grabbing coins. They were thinking about how designers created the level’s map. They were thinking about how they managed to make the game more suspenseful with sound effects. They were thinking about the decisions that were made regarding character design. They were thinking about why the rules were written a certain way.

Today, they’re the people behind a couple of makeshift towers in a post-apocalyptic world.

This semester marks the first ever Game Studio class, where seniors in Columbia’s Game Design program will make a complete game. The class is the second half of the major’s senior capstone project. During the first semester Game Project class, students participated in hours of preliminary planning and prototyping. Assistant professor Tom Dowd said Game Studio is dedicated to “getting the damn thing done.”

Before the fall semester began, the students produced a dozen game concepts that were eventually whittled down to three. Ultimately, the students voted on Dismantle.Repair.

“It’s like team battle­‑style Jenga,” said Cindy Miller, a student on the design team.

Dismantle.Repair is a first-person team competition. Two teams are stuck in a post-apocalyptic world where some huge disaster has made it impossible for rescue helicopters to see beyond the thick cloud layer of electrical storms. Thus, each player uses a device called a Digital Molecule Translator (DMT) to turn ordinary objects into blocks. Then, players use those blocks to build a tower. The first team to reach the cloud level wins.

It’s not as simple as it sounds. The player shoots a gun at a trash can and, in an instant, it turns into a building block. But with any game worth its salt, there’s a catch.

There are only enough blocks to complete one tower. Thus, one team has to loot blocks from the other team’s tower.

The class brings together students from each concentration in the Game Design major: design, programming, art/animation and sound.

“The students cross over a little bit during their normal time in the major, but the senior project is really when everybody comes together,” Dowd said.

Dowd teaches the class with associate professor Joseph Cancellaro. The two stressed the importance of the students working in a community instead of in their own isolated environment. Each group depends highly on the others throughout the process, so collaboration isn’t only encouraged-it’s mandatory.

Cancellaro stressed how important it is for students to take charge of the project.

“Really, the class is just so they can learn how to be leaders, so I don’t tell them how to do things,” Cancellaro said. “If I come in and say, ‘This is not right,’ I let him figure out how to get it right. I don’t tell him how to get it right.”

The class is also designed to give students a real world experience. Dowd, who was the lead designer on the Xbox title MechAssault, said it’s a good emulation of the real world, but is still very minimal in comparison.

“It’s very different when you’re in the job nine to five,” he said. “The goal here is that what we teach you in the classroom will make you better at your job once you get there.”

Meet the four teams responsible for creating Dismantle.Repair.

The design team

The initial idea of Dismantle.Repair came from Andy Bold. Bold is working hard toward a career he’s considered since the “Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis days.”

“I thought I’d just do what I wanted to do since I was a kid,” Bold said. “And it’s obviously been a lot harder work than what most people expect. I think people come here expecting to just play games and not really do their work, but there’s a lot of work involved.”

Bold, a member of the design team, was taken aback by his classmates’ decision to pick his idea. Although he was excited, he was unsure about the role he was going to fill.

Since it was his idea, Bold was elected the design lead. As the lead of the design team, he is the figurehead of the group. He communicates within the group and serves as an ambassador of sorts to the instructors and other groups.

“I usually dictate jobs to people. I will help out where needed,” Bold said. “Unfortunately I don’t get to do as much physical work as I’d like.”

The design team oversees the details of gameplay and makes sure the game is fun. Some members of the design team build the different game missions and work on game scoring. Others lay out buildings and paths on the game map. The group is also plagued by questions.

“‘Are the towers too far apart? Is it going to take you too long to cross the map? Are they too close? Is it going to take you not enough time?’ They’re doing all that,” Dowd said.

The programming team

It’s up to the programming team to take the design team’s ideas and make everything work. Brian Smith, the programming lead, said the team is “basically in charge of making sure the game exists and runs.”

Smith always wanted to be a game programmer. He’s the sort of guy who likes “creating things out of nothing.” Using the Torque Game Engine, that’s possible.

The programmers’ primary tool is the Torque Game Engine, the groundwork for creating the game. They have to modify and manipulate (and at times, “work against”) the code in the program to make the game work.

The idea of working with code and messing around with specific details in the game engine brings about the image of a tinkerer, crafting away at specific details in his or her workshop. While there are tinkerers on the programming team, especially interested in doing daily tasks and working toward specific goals, Smith isn’t one of them.

“I personally would consider myself more of a designer-programmer,” he said. “I don’t care so much for tinkering with things. I like to create the vision and help design where things should go.”

The art and animation team

The lead of the art team, Brendan Gouletas, was first sure about his future in gaming when he was 16 or 17.

L”The PlayStation just came out, and me and my brothers were together and were playing Final Fantasy VII. The cinematics in that game blew me away,” Gouletas said. “And I pointed at the screen and said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ “

The Game Studio class marks the first time the art and animation group even share the same building as the other groups.

“We all grew up in different concentrations,” Gouletas said. “We didn’t actually know each other until this semester. It’s actually kind of exciting.”

Burdened with a difficult task, the art and animation team are in charge of the face of the game. They have to create cars that are transformed into building blocks and what the different characters look like.

During the Game Project class, the art team opted to give the game a grittier, more realistic look instead of making it brighter and more cartoon-like.

Artists start out each facet of the project by waiting for descriptions of the objects they have to make. They begin the process by drawing out some concept art. Then, everyone reviews it and makes sure it holds up to the game’s continuity.

The artists then make a rough polygon “mesh” of the object, create the coloration and the surface of it, and if the object has to animate, they animate it.

Since it’s a futuristic, post-apocalyptic game, each object requires a bit of creativity. Each wrecked car, mailbox and street pole must look in some way futuristic.

“They’re putting a futuristic science fiction bend on everything.” he said, “So it’s like, ‘OK, you have to make a futuristic garbage dumpster, but it can’t look like the garbage dumpster I see when I look out my window at the construction going on on Wabash.”

The audio ‘team’

While the design team has 13 members, the audio team has only one.

“I found Columbia and I came to check out the film sound program,” said Ryan Tretter, the sole proprietor of the sound team. “I came to the open house, and they announced that they were going to open the game design major. I was like, ‘What the hell? This is better.’ I just kind of jumped into it, and I loved it.”

Tretter, the self-proclaimed “Lone Ranger” of the team, is entrusted with the task of developing all the sound effects and music in the game. Then, he has to go into the script and implement it into the level. This means he has to work pretty tightly with the programming team.

Cancellaro has a personal weekly meeting with Tretter to look over what he’s done in the previous week and what he’s going to accomplish in the coming week.

Tretter, like his cohorts, does a lot of work outside of class. But unlike the others, he doesn’t spend a lot of time in a lab. To his advantage, he has most of the supplies he needs in the comfort of his own home.

Dowd said the sound portion of the class mimics the game industry.

“Sound, traditionally, is one of the most underrepresented disciplines in the industry and is being interestingly reflected in program participation,” Dowd said.