Talented Young Game Developers at geMasTIK II 2009

geMasTIK II 2009- Pagelaran Mahasiswa Tingkat Nasional Bidang TIK, is the second annual national event hosted by Department of Education Indonesia and organized by IT Telkom. This year (2009) is the first time they have game developer contest, among 8 other contests (more information you can visit http://www.gemastik.com)

The event was held in Bandung, in the new campus of IT Telkom. Even though the campus location is on the outer border of Bandung, the event received 2753 registrations from 104 universities all across Indonesia, a surprising number for an event without ATL promotion.
(http://www.gemastik.com/2009/plugins/contest_statistic/stats_user.php)
(http://www.gemastik.com/2009/plugins/contest_statistic/stats_lomba.php)

I was lucky enough to get the invitation and experienced the event first hand, there are things that impressed me thus encourage me to write this note.


Surprising quality from the finalist;

12 finalist are entitled to present their work in front of external judges, and i was expecting for flash single player casual games, i even made a note on my judging form to give perfect score for any team who managed to develop multiplayer flash games.
The next thing happened, really open my eyes on how the students creativity level has increased since i enter the game development industry 2001. Some of the product presented not just have multi player engine, but also experimenting on the user interface. Products that caught my attention are:

- Veda, developed by ITB students (Cahaya team)
what's so unique? they developed a multipoint user interface that allow, up 6 mouse pointers on one screen and wrapped it up with education game for children 6-12 years old. They offer this solution for elementary school that dont have computer lab or only have budget for several computer.
The engine and application was built using C sharp, and prepare the application for customizable content (e.g teach culture, math, language). For the "bonus" level they added voice recognition feature for children to practice their intonation for certain language.
This game ended up as the winner of the game development contest

-Nusa, developed by ITTelkom Students (Palapa team)
what's so unique? The game was ordinary, but what make the product interesting was the research and preparation the team made. Before they made the game, they did a survey to some kindergartens across Bandung, and ask the teachers about favorite things their students have. After the prototype is released the came back to the kindergartens and test the game to the students and again ask for the teachers opinions (they presented a video for these interviews). Then, they develop a parental guide on how to teach the children to play the game, and stated what will the children learn after they played certain games.
To the children attention even more, they added story telling feature, a simple voice recorded but very useful for their "toddler" target market who mostly haven't been able to read.
This is something i wouldnt have think of as a students. Their product is so ready to be marketed, it has gone beyond my expectations for student's projects.
This game ended up as the runner up of the game development contest

- Gamelan, developed by ITS Students
what's so unique? the experiment of using stereo camera to play musical game that teach how to play gamelan. The game need a camera (in this case the team use PS3 camera) to capture body part movement. The software is able to tell the different between skin color and cloth color, it only capture the skin part, so when the player head and hands move it translate them to game inputs.
Unfortunately, the amount of time given is not enough to develop a full functional product. There are still problems when the room is not bright enough and how to manage more flexible camera position, but the idea and the experiment has caught the judges attention.

Looking forward for the same event next year and hope the winner/finalist of the contest have opportunities to continue their work.