Created by a team of Bradley game design students, the video game Starcats is slated to be released on Steam and Itch.io later this summer. (Photo courtesy Bradley University)

A team of Bradley University game design students has won the chance to exhibit their digital game, Starcats, on one of the world’s largest gaming stages.

The four-player cooperative/competitive game featuring feline astronauts placed in the top five of the E3 Collegiate Competition, sponsored by the Entertainment Software Association.

The team has been invited to Los Angeles for the E3 convention this week, June 13-15, to exhibit and share

A team of Bradley University game design students have been invited to exhibit a game they created at the E3 convention in Los Angeles. Pictured are (front row, from left) Gage Melton, Brien Jackson, Luke Grebe, Joe Sorgea, Brian Rodgers, Quentin Young and faculty advisor Devin Monnens. Back row, from left, are Matt Heerdegen, Matt Kolakowski, Aidan Kennell, Caleb Sams, Jacob Gruener and Ryan Hughes. Not pictured are Rhianna Guptill and Samantha Concklin.

the game with thousands of attendees from around the world.

Game producer Quentin Young of Groveland, said in an interview last week that he’s still in shock at the opportunity to attend a convention he has long dreamed about.

“I grew up watching E3, glued to the TV as I watched Microsoft and Sony change the industry by unveiling hardware like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3,” Young said. “It’s always been my dream to go to E3, but I never thought I would make a game and have it be shown there. And I definitely never thought it would

Bradley game design students spent two semesters during the past school year creating a video game, Starcats, that has placed in the top five of the prestigious E3 collegiate competition.(Photo courtesy Bradley University)

happen when I was 22 and fresh out of college.”

Ethan Hamm, chairman of Bradley’s Department of Interactive Media, said E3 is commonly said to be the world’s largest gaming convention.

“It is really a big deal. This is a fantastic opportunity for the students to show the world the amazing work they have done,” Hamm said.

The video game curriculum was started at Bradley in 2010 as a collaboration between the Departments of Interactive Media and Computer Science & Information Systems, with additional support from the Art Department. The university’s program was ranked 13th nationally among undergraduate game design programs by the Princeton Review in 2015.

Young led a team of 14 that created the game as its capstone project in a year-long senior game design class during the 2016-17 school year.

In the game, players have crash landed onto a planet and are trying to fuel their ship so they can survive and escape. The twist is that players are free to behave how they choose, whether that means playing selfishly or cooperatively, and any number of players can “win,” rather than having a clear-cut winner.

While E3 didn’t tell the team why their game made the top five from a field of 400 entries, Young said its originality is a strength.

“One of the pitfalls of being a game designer is that whenever you think of an original idea, it seems like someone else has already made it and it’s already on the market,” he said. “I think we have something special here because there’s no other game where you run around as a cat astronaut, so to speak.”

The game is geared for 15 to 25 year olds, a demographic that plays video games often and has the time and opportunity to gather with friends at homes or dorm rooms.

“It’s meant to be played in the same room on the same couch on the same TV. That’s what a lot of us did when we were in school, so that’s what inspired us,” Young said.

Most of the team members were senior game design majors who graduated from Bradley In May.

Young said Starcats is currently built to be played via a PC but the team hopes to expand on it in the future.

“The dream is to form a business that we could license this game under and sell it or just be able to publish it and put it on a (gaming) console,” he said. “But right now the entire team is working together to get ready for E3.”

While Young is excited to be at the convention, he said it will actually be “grueling.”

“We’ll be on the floor 23 hours over the course of three days, so a total of 72 hours, presenting the game to a crowd of 18,000 people,” he said. “We’re going to be working our butts off trying to make sure everyone sees the game and experiences it.”

Young said he and the team are looking forward to meeting the teams from the other schools who placed in the top five: Brigham Young University, DigiPen Institute of Technology, Ringling College of Art and Design and Savannah College of Art and Design.

“I’m looking forward to being able to interact and and talk about how our game development went compared to their development and being able to experience what it’s like to be in that setting with like-minded individuals around you,” Young said. “No offense to central Illinois, but I don’t know where the nearest game development school is apart from bradley. We’re kind of isolated out here.”

Team members say they’re excited to have personal interaction with industry professionals and create contacts that might help them land jobs and take their game to the next level.

Young is working this summer as a digital content intern at Maui Jim in Peoria but hopes in the future to move to Los Angeles, Seattle or Austin, Texas, which are major hubs of the video game design industry.

After the convention, Starcats is slated to be released on Steam and Itch.io. For more information about Starcats, visit the website at www.starcatsgame.com.

— Bradley designers earn a spot on gaming’s biggest stage–