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Rose-Hulman Female Students
Create Award-Winning
Computer Game to Interest Girls in Science
Four Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology female computer science and computer engineering students
have created an award-winning computer game that gives players the
opportunity to experience aspects of college life without ever stepping
on a campus.
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Developing Game For Girls: Rose-Hulman
Institute of Technology students (from left) Victoria Taylor, Anna
Kaplunov, Andrea Leichtman and Amanda Stephan developed the Woo Hoo
College computer game that earned third-place honors in this year's
Games 4 Girls competition at the University of Illinois. |
The captivating interactive game, named Woo Hoo College, earned third
place honors in this year's Games 4 Girls national computer programming
competition, sponsored by Electronic Arts, during the annual ChicTech
Conference at the University of Illinois. The objective was to create a
computer game that would interest teenage girls into considering careers
in computer science, technology and engineering.
Achieving that goal was a team that included Anna Kaplunov, a senior
computer science major from Morton Grove, Ill.; Andrea Leichtman, a
junior computer engineering major from Coon Rapids, Minn.; Amanda
Stephan, a sophomore computer science major from Granger, Ind.; and
Victoria Taylor, a senior computer science major from Greenwood, Ind.
Each member received $500 and Rose-Hulman's Department of Computer
Science and Software Engineering received $1,000 to start a Women in
Computer Science Club.
By playing "Woo Hoo College," persons can study or sleep in a residence
hall; order meals from a cafeteria, eat at an off-campus restaurant or
order food in their room; shoot basketball free throws or practice
scoring soccer goals in intramural activities; or have an on-campus job
as a grader, checking tests for accuracy. And, of course, they can also
attend a college class -- helping to keep friends awake so that they can
take notes during a lecture.
Each activity chosen will affect the player's eight status bars on the
bottom of the screen. These sensitive status areas include stress,
happiness, health, studying, money, social, food and sleep.
"We wanted the players to realize that everything that you do in the
game has some affect on one or more of the status elements. The player
must keep everything in its proper perspective," Leichtman stated, who
designed the game's brightly-colored graphic design.
"The status bars add a special interactive element to the game,"added
Stephan, who brought her programming expertise to the group. "It keeps
the players aware of everything that's going on around them.
There are consequences for not going to class or staying too long in the
student recreation center. It makes the game more fun and realistic."
In their cases, sleep was a precious commodity for the four Rose-Hulman
students during the game's development. The team completed the game --
including writing thousands of lines of computer programming code --
over the course of a 24-hour period during one spring weekend before the
competition deadline.
"After learning the (Game Maker) program, we rolled up our sleeves and
went to work," stated Taylor, another of the game's programmers. "We had
played a similar restaurant game and liked its'role-playing aspects.
Since we were all familiar with life on a college campus, we thought we
could come up with a game that would interest high school girls."
Eight games, developed by teams from Midwest colleges, were evaluated by
high school girls participating in the ChicTech Conference.
Projects are examined according to a variety of criteria including, but
not limited to, technical merit, entertainment value and creativity.
Research indicates that boys enjoy a relatively greater degree of
confidence in their competence with computers because they spend so much
more time as children playing computer games. It suggests that this
difference in confidence contributes to the gender imbalance realized in
the field of computer science, in both academic and professional arenas.
Most software game designers are men and much of the software designed
for children is geared toward boys.
Games 4 Girls strives to incorporate a female perspective in the
technologies that engage girls. The contest promises the infusion of a
fresh, feminine perspective into the game design arena.
Rose-Hulman's Woo Hoo College game was showcased at this year's Midwest
Botball Robotics competition. The development team hopes to allow
teenagers to play the game at local schools and youth organizations this
fall.
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