Student Feature: 'Student Postmortem: Insignia, University Of Bradford'

As part of a new feature in Gamasutra's expanded game education coverage, University of Bradford Honors graduate Alan O'Dea shares his experience working on student RTS/RPG Insignia for a university project during his final year, and for the 2004-2005 Dare to be Digital student video game competition, for which the game was a finalist. As O'Dea explains of the title, which was completed in 2005: "The project was the major group component of our final year studies on a BSc Interactive Systems and Video Games Design course at the University of Bradford, UK. The process of pitching our idea [in Dare to be Digital] was highly informative and gave us an industry perspective, insight and positive feedback from the judges. The pressure of competition also helped really focus the team's efforts rather than the more nebulous approach of most student projects. The game was conceived as an RPG/RTS game in the vein of UFO. The game design detailed a dark modern world where corruption and conspiracy among the world's great superpowers, corporations, governments and religions forces the player into a morally ambiguous fight against supposed evil. The player manages teams of highly trained military operatives whose mission is to track down the underlying truth behind these conspiracies. The game focused on adult themes, typical and atypical power groups, and a modern role playing setting laid over a mission based tactical RTS." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more information on what went right and wrong during the making of this intriguing student title (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).