By Skylar Smith
Daily Titan Staff Writer

People may not notice, but Cal State Fullerton has a rich community of video gamers on campus. Just take a peek into the TSU Underground and you will see several laptops running some video game or another.

Walk down any hallway near the Computer Science Building and you will see at least one Playstation Portable or Nintendo DS. One of the major gamer foundations on campus is the Video Game Design Club, which is not only a departmental club supported by the CS building, but also has its own room in the building.

“This week and next week are finals week so we are trying to keep it quiet. During the normal semester a lot of people come in here in-between classes for five to ten minutes and relax… and also make games and play some games in here too,” said the club president Daniel Selnick, 21, a computer science major.

The club was initially organized in 2006 by Jason Alan Jackson, a CSUF graduate. Jordan Gallego, an active member of the club, has been with the group since the beginning. “I’ve been a member pretty much since the first semester it was organized in spring 2006. We didn’t get officially recognized by the campus until 2007 in the fall,” said Gallego. “But I’ve been there since that first spring semester with the founding members.”

“This semester was kind of a reboot because we came into it with a very, very small member base,” said Selnick. “Leading this semester we have about 20 or 30 very active members, and next semester we hope to have more members.”

The club’s main initiative is to encourage and help other computer science majors get good grades, learn the programming required to achieve their goals in the video game industry, and have fun while doing it.

“The people are the greatest thing about it, and the help. Computer science is a pretty hard major and they help me with math and programming,” said member Macario Lopez at a meeting last Thursday.

Selnick said this semester was about making friends and helping each other in classes, but next semester they are going to put a big emphasis on making games. However, there are a few members with ideas in mind. One member, Florian Zitzelsberger, has already made a game called Irides: Master of Blocks.

“He presented his iPhone and Dreamcast game at one of the meetings. Showed us how the editor works and the graphical user interface for it,” said Selnick. “He also showed us the game in action on his iPhone. He had us ask questions and it was pretty cool. His game is already published on the iPhone and will be published on the Dreamcast soon.”

Making a successful video game by yourself or with friends in this cu

Photo By Ron Fu/Daily Titan Staff Photographer

rrent economic climate can be tough and, much like the music industry, a lot of the emphasis is now on indie-developed projects.

“For big publishing, like Xbox Live Arcade, requires a lot of resources and a lot of time because they are very strict on the quality control of the content that gets published on there,” said Selnick. “You have to do a lot of work. I think most of us will focus on the indie type games.”

“Some students go off and make their games solo and some students work in groups. Most of the time it’s in a group because it requires a lot of work,” said Selnick. “For even a simple indie game, it requires a lot of forethought in the preplanning and preproduction and creation of art assets and sound assets and making sure it’s fun for play testing. It’s a very involved process.”

The club also occasionally takes trips to developers, and a few lucky members got to go to the Games Developer Conference in San Fransisco. “We went to Obsidian (a game development studio) and it was excellent,” said Selnick. “We are hoping to go on a tour next semester but we still have to make plans for which company.”

Joining the club can also be beneficial because members will be able to network with each other in the future. “I’ve (had) a lot of fun, I’ve met new people, I’ve got a lot of networking capabilities at the game developer conference,” said Gallego. “In the game industry it’s networking and this club’s helped me a lot with that and getting to know people in the industry and what I need to do to get there.”

Aside from making video games and working on class projects, the students like to have fun playing games in their club room and at tournaments. A tradition of the Video Game Design Club is a Halo tournament on Halloween appropriately titled “Haloween.”

“We actually got four Xbox 360s and linked them together on LAN and had a four vs. four vs. four vs. four, 16 player halo LAN party,” said Selnick about this year’s Haloween. “It was one of the club’s first events that was pretty big so it’s a tradition now.”

“Everyone’s invited to the tournaments. We have forums and a mailing list which are both open to anyone who wants to join them,” said Selnick.

The club is also open to non-computer science majors who have a background in video games and want to hang out with people they share common interests with. “I like meeting new people too because I’m a freshman, but I’m a business student so I don’t really fit in, but I just really like video games,” said club member Sheena Gayanilo.

The Video Game Design Club also has plans to create a much larger tournament and is trying to get access to the Xbox 360s in the underground for a day to hold their tournament there. With new tournaments coming up, plans to produce several indie games and an expanding member base, the Video Game Design Club is sure to become a staple of CSUF and its computer science program.