GCG Feature: 'Red Bull BUILD: University of Central Florida Mayhem'

In the latest feature on Gamasutra sister site Game Career Guide, five students from the University of Central Florida's Digital Media department, collectively known as Zombie Cow Studios, describe what went into the development of their game Red Bull X-Fighters: Mayhem, which was created for the Red Bull BUILD contest. In the excerpt, team members Alex Hodgkiss, Christian Franqui and Sara Raasch describe their work environment, and how it added to, and sometimes distracted them from, their development duties: "Working in such a fun, comfortable environment certainly fires up creative juices, it allows you to get there and actually want to be there, nonetheless there can be a pitfall; one has to be mature enough to distinguish work and play and when each is appropriate. Sometimes we would get caught up in a Halo 2 match-off or even worse, involve the industry professionals that came in to help us. I mean really, who can say "yea, I whooped the Creative Director of 20th Century Fox in Halo?" Unfortunately for me, he turned out to be pretty damn good at it. But at the same time, there could have been something I could be working on to make the game better. Just as long as there is a good balance between work and rest—productivity can always propel. Periodically, we would have industry pros fly in to work with us. These exceptional and giving people lend us their experience and advice throughout our journey. When they were there, It was really important to me to act as a sponge and soak in everything they had to say, because I knew that such an opportunity for knowledge was rare. School can only take you so far, we as life-long learners need to learn from those who have been around the bend any time the opportunity arises. Lucky for us, we had the best of the best to learn from—what a great gift. Right in the back of our heads we knew that time was not on our side. Things were winding down, and the game was taking form. We were all barely on any hours of sleep, sick of Hot Pockets and Pizza Rolls and still had a lot to do - a true glimpse of how the industry is like and where we were headed if we choose to continue to pursue this career. We had a lot of fun, many, many frustrations, amazing gratification and an experience we will never forget." You can now read the full Game Career Guide feature for more on the development of Red Bull X-Fighters: Mayhem, including the team's fellowship, studio work, and a postmortem of the game itself (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).