Cebu Game Dev holds Archcon Game Jam ’17

Members of Cebu Game Dev in a post-Archcon meeting at the PhiloSophia Library Cafe in Mandaue City

LESS than a year after it was founded, Cebu Game Dev forged another milestone with its Archcon Game Jam, a game development competition for programmers, designers and artists.

Cebu Game Dev founder Clint Hennesy Porras Cagang, a graduate of Digipen Institute of Technology Singapore, said they announced the event in July 2017.

The game competition’s theme “Masks” was announced last August 19 and was followed by three workshops on game design, game art and game programming leading to the Archcon event last October 28 to 29.

“Each workshop was done every two weeks before the event. The workshops gave the contestants/participants enough basic knowledge to help them with the direction and management of their game that they would eventually submit,” he said.

About 15 teams registered for the competition but only eight teams submitted their games. Of the eight games, five were displayed at Robinsons Galleria Cebu for con-goers to play the games and vote for the games they enjoyed the most.

Cagang said Archcon existed since 2004 and gradually evolved as an event for artists, gamers, cosplayers, exhibitors/collectors and TCG players.

The event has always been known to host a lot of different competitions such as game tournaments, cosplay competitions, and art competitions.

This is the first time, in collaboration with Cebu Game Dev, that a game development competition was organized.

Cebu Game Dev is a local game development organization in Cebu dedicated to kickstarting game development in the community.

The game competition was made possible by Archcon Cebu, Red Trident Games, ClintKAMMS Corp., Phialo Trading and Odd Games.

The event held last October gathered more than 200 votes from con-goers who chose Team Exodia’s Epic Mask Battle of the History winning back-to-back awards as the First Placer and recipient of the People’s Choice Award.

Epic Mask Battle of the History is a four-player battle royal, a local multiplayer game where four players fight each other until only one player remains. The game is played using four X-Box controllers.

Team Exodia is composed of five members from the University of Cebu, University of the Philippines and Cebu Technological University.

Team leader and game programmer Nivelle Mendiola, who studies Computer Engineering at UC, said they thought of giving up on completing their game.

But the workshops hosted by Red Trident Games motivated them to continue as members of the Cebu Game Dev would approach the community in the workshop about specific technical issues.

“What Red Trident did was really smart and correct. They knew that first timers would have a hard time pulling this out so putting up workshops in the weeks and months leading to the competition was one of the reasons why we felt refreshed in going back to work on the project,” Mendiola said.

Up next in the calender of Cebu Game Dev is Cebu’s first ever Global Game Jam 2018, an international, three-day Game Jam where developers create games within three days.

“I encourage everyone who are into game development to partake in this event as it only happens once a year and is the perfect pressure cooker of creativity in Game Development,” Cagang said.

Cagang said Cebu Game Dev is looking at organizing live demos for both illustration and 3D art, and animation as part of their mission to make Cebu as a game development hub.

Part of the organization’s agenda is to go around schools and give free seminars for students and talk about career paths in the game development sector.