Got (Video) Game?

Reported September 2009

ATLANTA (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Do you got game? Two out of three people have picked up a controller in the past six months. In fact, more people are gaming than going to the movies. But games could turn your hobby into a moneymaker.

Georgia Tech students Cory Johnson and Ian Guthridge live in a state of virtual reality.

"It's really easy for even a moderately good video game to just pull you into their world," Guthridge told Ivanhoe.

"You're changing the experience itself as you play," Johnson said.

They're not just gamers.

Between classes, these computer science majors developed a new X-box game called AudiBall.

"In this game, we try to get the player to create their own audiovisual experience," Guthridge explained.

But there's science and math behind the fun. The game repurposes a standard guitar controller. Players use buttons to pick a target, shoot balls and score points. The more goals scored, the more the music changes.

"In terms of algorithms, we had to do a lot of work with sound in order to make it so that it was very procedural and dynamic," Johnson said.

"As they successfully get through the game, the better they perform, the more, the fuller the soundtrack becomes," Guthridge explained.

The students created the design and did all programming. They even composed and synchronized the music tracks to bring AudiBall to life.

"Every time you play through, the game will be different," Johnson said.

It's computer science any gamer can appreciate.

"Why can't science be fun?" Guthridge asked.

AudiBall is now available to all gamers on the community game site at X-box live, for 200 Microsoft points or $2.50. Though they're all still students, AudiBall's creators are already working on their newest video game, which they hope will be even bigger.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA, and the Mathematical Association of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

David Terraso
Media Relations Specialist for the Colleges of Computing, Liberal Arts and Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
(404) 385-2966
david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE
Pender McCarter
IEEE http://www.ieee.org
IEEE-USA http://www.ieeeusa.org
p.mccarter@ieee.org

Ivars Peterson
Mathematical Association of America,
Washington, DC 20036-1358
(800) 741-9415
http://www.maa.org
ipeterson@maa.org

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