For my summer internship, I am working in the USC Game Lab with Peter Brinson on the “Powerhouse” project. As part of the implementation of a Smart Grid energy system across the USC campus, we will be making a game encouraging energy conservation. Over the summer, I will work as a game designer and programmer to design and implement prototypes of this game.
The game is targeted at USC’s students and faculty. The goal is to raise awareness of the Smart Grid and encouraging players to reduce energy consumption around campus. Powerhouse will incorporate real-time information about energy usage from the Smart Grid, so that conserving energy in different parts of campus will actually affect the mechanics and world of the game, perhaps even becoming a mechanic in itself.
The academic thesis for this project is “How can a small team design a game that meets the educational goals of a large client while remaining fun?” This thesis has a few different facets. First, it is a design challenge. Saving energy is far from an enjoyable activity in itself, and it is certainly an interesting problem to create a game that effectively makes it fun. Throughout the summer, I will be working on prototypes with the goal of making a game that is engaging in its own right and meaningfully incorporates the Smart Grid data into its theme and mechanics. Besides the pure design aspect of the thesis, there is also a logistical angle. How will our team organize the work? How will we communicate with the client? How do we prototype a game based around the involvement of a large number of players, and built upon a stream of data that is not available yet? How can I develop my own skills to code prototypes as rapidly and expressively as possible? These questions are all inherent in that academic thesis, and I intend on finding the answers this summer.
Throughout the past year, Interactive Media classes have taught me how to prototype games and given me many opportunities to put that skill to practice. This internship will be an introduction to “the real world,” to working with a client and accepting responsibility in a project that will affect many people. The Smart Grid project is certainly a sizable client, and I will be accountable for a significant portion of the game’s progress, but hopefully the familiar setting and healthy amount of creative liberty will keep the project from being too threatening or stressful. Because of that, my Powerhouse internship should provide a great bridge from designing academically or for fun to designing as a career. I’m looking forward to it.