For my final ExCite project, I was tasked to gather information about the Entrepreneurial Game Studio (EGS) and the studio’s current project on Citywide Gaming. While there was some information about it available online, I felt that I needed more personal and in-depth answers by someone who was involved in the project. Thus, I contacted Arianna Gass, the Program Manager from the EGS and had our interview about some of the questions I had about the project.
Arianna explained to me that, the whole reason the Citywide Gaming project was created was to bring the community together and to “create shared experiences for Philadelphians to enjoy” using video games. The project did not have any other ultimatum such as profit or to promote the studio, it was simply there for fun. But of course, fun took a lot of work and dedication.
For one, everyone had to be on the same page and know what they are dealing with. For the EGS, the last big project they had, involved working with the Cira Centre and tinkering with the 29-story building’s 1,500 LED light fixtures. For the group, they had to find a way to control all 1,500 LED lights. Their solution to this problem was to connect the lights into a code package and sending Python commands to control the lights.
With this figured out, they were able to create a multiplayer skyscraper version of the game Tetris and Pong using both of the Cira Centres in Philly to battle against both sides of the city. In the end, they were a success in getting the community together and even got the local news stations to broadcast the event.
However, I do have a suggestion for the group. If they were to create something like this again, I would like it to be more “arcadey”. In arcades, some machines there allow the player to pick between two games instead of one inside of a single arcade machine. The most common ones I’ve personally seen are the Pacman and Galaxy combos. For the EGS, since they have created two games already, they could possibly find a way to play both games at the same time.
