By Carolyn Doyle
Students at the Luddy School work to develop real career-focused skills – and a class project to create a retro-style game has generated big real-world interest for Indiana University Indianapolis.
When the IUI Office of Admissions and Enrollment was looking for ways to engage with admitted students, Chief Enrollment Officer PJ Woolston reached out to students at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering in Indianapolis.
A Luddy School student team (including Kylee Dicken, pictured above) created “You Gotta Regatta!”, a game that racked up more than 10,000 plays in its first week online. The game took players on a fast-paced journey, showcasing campus and city landmarks.
The game
Accompanied by punchy retro music, in this 8-bit side scroller game the player piloted a canoe along the Indianapolis Downtown Canal, dodging obstacles and collecting coins for the best score.
“The thing that made this so powerful was how distinctive it was,” says Woolston, vice chancellor for enrollment management at IU’s Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Columbus campuses.
“It’s something we’re doing that nobody else is doing, and it’s not something anybody else can copy.
“Nobody can regatta like we can regatta!”
The game was online only for the spring promotion. There are plans for it to return next spring.
Raising awareness of IU Indianapolis
Woolston’s office commissioned the “You Gotta Regatta!” game for a microsite featuring weekly content to engage with students who’ve been admitted to Indiana University Indianapolis.
“We really wanted this for yield efforts,” he says. “So, students who are already admitted, we do a whole host of things to help them understand the value of coming to IU Indy.
“We essentially are pinging them on a weekly basis with something a little more fun and exciting,” about the university, he explains. “We’ll frequently do a drawing, a giveaway, tell them a little about the city.
“And we thought this game would be a really cool complement to all of the other things that we’re doing.”
The “You Gotta Regatta” game exceeded all expectations, Woolston says.
“We (posted the game) on April 11, 2024,” he says, “and in that first week we had over 10,000 interactions with ‘You Gotta Regatta!’
“It was the highest to that date. It was the post we made that had the most engagement.”
Admitted students could submit their scores for a chance to win an IU Indianapolis-themed gift.
The game helped enhance awareness of the campus name change from IUPUI to IUI earlier this year, and of the campus’ annual Regatta races, a tradition that began in 2009. Held in the fall along the Downtown Canal in Indianapolis, the event celebrates campus life, with teams of students, alumni, faculty and staff paddling to compete.
This year’s Regatta will be September 28.
Woolston saw first-hand how admitted students were getting caught up in the regatta-themed game.
“Nobody can play it just once. Everybody wanted another crack at it.”
He credited former Luddy Indianapolis Director of Undergraduate Recruitment Taylor Dooley with suggesting that his office partner with the school.
“It really was us trying to think about creative ways to connect with prospective students,” Woolston says.
“If we were going to do something like this, it was going to have to be in a place like Luddy. And this idea emerged particularly because of video games and media, and that connection with Luddy. Just a really great opportunity.”
Luddy School connects clients with students
To create the game, IU Indianapolis’ Division of Enrollment Management reached out to students in the Luddy School’s NEWM-N 420 Multimedia Project Development class, taught by Zeb Wood, a senior lecturer in Media Arts and Science at the Luddy School.
“All class teams do projects for clients as a part of the course,” Wood says. “We have served nearly 300 clients since 2016 and served more than 50,000 student hours giving our services to local, national and international organizations in both the startup, nonprofit, private, and research sectors.”
Once the IUI Admissions game project was assigned to a class team in the Fall 2023 semester, the students (pictured at left) got to work.
“We began the game by brainstorming ideas of games that fit the needs we were given by the clients,” says student Kylee Dicken, who was lead pixel artist on the project.
“The request was a retro-style game to drive engagement on the admissions site,” she explains, “a game that was fun, short, repeatable and showcased IU’s connection with the city of Indianapolis.
“We took inspiration from arcade and mobile games to present some genres. An endless runner game ended up being the winner.”
Wood noted, “In the spring of 2024, more art and game development were done to bring the game to polish before public release in April 2024. Students on the team in the spring elected to get independent study, internship, or Capstone credit to finish it out. I mentored the team throughout the experiences.”
The students showcased their “You Gotta Regatta” project during Capstone at the Luddy School.
Preparing students for future careers
“A lot of the lessons for this project involved teamwork and management,” says Dexter Bosley, who served as lead developer on the student team.
“We each had responsibilities beyond our project and balancing those with our individual task was something that we persevered through to reach the finish line.
“This was important to me as a software and app developer and designer,” he adds.
“Getting tools and resources from others and having to somehow make it match their intended vision while functioning as a game was an exercise in communication and problem-solving that’s valuable for me moving forward in that field.”
As lead pixel artist, Dicken said the game development project helped her to become comfortable with tools that are used by professionals, such as sprite sheets, which contain all the animations of a character in a single file.
“I learned so much from working on this project!” she says.
“I was able to improve my art so quickly just from the different things I had to create for this project. I think it was a great opportunity to challenge myself and improve.”
“Pixel art has always been one of my favorite hobbies,” she says, noting how her “You Gotta Regatta” work “gave me hope and confidence to continue with this skill to turn it into a career.”
A creative journey
For the team , developing the concept for the game began with a simple sketch on a whiteboard, Dicken says.
“I took this sketch and created a mockup of what the game could look like.
“I really wanted to feature IU as much as possible,” she says. “I made sure to use IU’s color palette, and include it wherever I could, like with the logo on the coins.
“Most of all I tried to reference the real places and events we were including by recreating the canal, the start of Regatta and its canoes, and most importantly making buildings recognizable,” Dicken says.
“The hope was to have prospective students be familiar with areas from the game once they visit campus and for current students to recognize buildings they pass every day.”
Team members collaborated to take the game from concept to a fully realized, fun and playable game.
A winning collaboration
The “You Gotta Regatta!” project was a true test of the Luddy School students’ commitment and talent.
Wood, their instructor, says, “As both an alumni and faculty of IUI, (and a serial Regatta Racer), I was so excited to have the chance to help mentor this team to the finish line.
“The team communicated with several IUI stakeholders and met each of their milestones, every week, for two semesters. It’s not easy, they have plenty of other classes, jobs, and distractions.
“Their success is a perfect example of how course experiences can more closely mimic the production of games in the real world. Experiential learning in N420, means communicating with the client, compromising, and racing to the end goal, just like real-world relationships.”
Wood adds, “Super kudos, especially to Inès Rivera, our project lead, and Kylee Dicken, our lead pixel artist, and Dexter Bosley our lead developer.
“I think we should make another one!”
Media Contact
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