by Jian Farhoumand.
Students from the University of Brighton have
collaborated with a professor at Stanford University, California, and his
autistic daughter to create a new mobile game to be released next week.
Marcus Brooks, 23, originally from Hertfordshire, is in
his third year of a BSc Computer Science (Games) degree at the University of
Brighton and has founded Greedy Gull Studios with classmates Matt
Manser, 21, Matej Navara, 21, and Joseph Loe, 20. Their company designs games
and apps for mobile phones and tablets. The music for their first official game
has been composed by American student, Chika Shimojima, 21, with the support of
her father, Professor Atsushi Shimojima, 51, who is a visiting scholar at
Stanford.
Greedy Gulls: Matt Manser(left), Marcus Brooks, Joseph
Loe and Matej Navara
Mr Brooks said: “I’ve programmed for years and always
loved it. Brighton is one of the only places that does this specific course so
it’s been a great learning experience and really fun. We designed the game
ourselves but still needed music for it. Our supervisor, Andrew Blake, met
Professor Shimojima and helped set up the collaboration. Chika has composed
some great music for the game which really adds to the fun and makes it much more
impacting.”
Course leader Andrew Blake, 45, said: “I
met Atsushi Shimojima at a Visual Languages conference in San Jose in
September. Atsushi and his daughter, who is regarded as a savant, have a
particular interest in designing music for computer games. I told Atsushi I was
the course leader for the BSc Computer Science (Games) at Brighton and might be
able to help. Hence the relationship between Greedy Gull and Chika-Pro, the
name under which Atsushi and his daughter create music.”
Greedy Gull Studios’ first game is succinctly entitled
Super Awesome Line Game and is best-described as a cross between Snake and
Tron. The main goal of the game is to navigate an ever-growing line around
sharp corners at ever-increasing speed, without crashing.
Mr Blake said of the game: “It’s great! I think it is a
quirky, frivolous bit of fun that quickly engrosses the player; exactly what
such casual games should be.”
Miss Shimojima is a musical prodigy who, despite having
autism spectrum disorder, is the driving force behind Chika-Pro. Her website describes her as “a surprisingly innocent mind who would rather create music
than speak words.” She watched a silent video of the game first, before
composing music for it.
Chika Shimojima composing music in her studio
Born in the US and raised in Japan, Miss Shimojima
started composing at the age of 11 and has now made hundreds of pieces of
music, many of which are used in films and games. She is taught piano by Myrna
Emata at Legato Music School, San Jose, and is mentored by James Gardiner, a
composer with two Grammy nominations and 42 gold and platinum awards.
Professor Shimojima said: “Chika has autism but has
tremendous musical talent so we created this production group to connect her
music to society. This is the first time Chika-Pro has collaborated with
students from Brighton University. I was interested in the fact that a group of
college students were building their own company to supply jobs to themselves.
I thought it’s a good match for Chika-Pro. We are hoping to keep up the
collaboration for further projects.”
Mr Blake is pleased with the project his students have
created and is impressed by their entrepreneurial spirit. He said: “I think
Greedy Gull is doing a fantastic job. They are the first group of students
within the faculty, as far as I am aware, who have set up their own business
under the faculty placement scheme and are proving to be a credit to the
university. I hope that they set a benchmark from which students in the future
will be able to follow their own entrepreneurial aspirations.”
Super Awesome Line Game is released on
Saturday 7th December and will be available to download for free on
Android and iOS.