Current Projects

Fire Hose Games

Now that I have graduated from MIT I am starting my own video game startup, Fire Hose Games. We're going to be doing games for positive social change, whether that be through brining games to new groups that couldn't play before, by educating and getting people excited about learning, or by creating new ways to interact with games. Pictures of the team to come soon!

Code Word

A small Facebook game that is designed to help keep people's brains active. It's much smaller in scope than most of my projects, but it tries out some interesting new ideas. Release expected towards the end of June 2008.

Spiritual sequel to AudiOdyssey

Yes, I'm beginning work on a new accessible game with a new team of Singaporean and MIT students. It's going to be very different from AudiOdyssey, but it will still be accessible regardless of visual status. More on this as the summer progresses.

Older Projects

Zen Waves

Created at the Media Lab under Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Zen Waves is a digital take on the Zen garden that explores the use of tangible user interfaces in electronic art. The project is especially interesting because of the radically different input and output devices (there is no screen, mouse, or keyboard, just rocks and a table), and the fact that no instructions are required to use the device, users learn how to use Zen Waves by playing around with it.

We're currently trying to get this into an art gallery, and we might take it to market from there, though we're not really sure yet.

This is Team Blockheads, makers of Zen Waves. Left to right are Nozomi Kakikuchi, Jason Furtado, Tiffany Wang, Ben Howell, and me. Not pictured is James Patten who let us use his Sensetable for the project. These super talented people are who really made Zen Waves possible. And yes, I'm dressed as Indiana Jones, it was Halloween and this is the only good team pic I could find.

AudiOdyssey

Created at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Games Lab, AudiOdyssey is an experimental computer games designed to be accessible to both the visually impaired community and mainstream gamers. The game also serves as the basis for my Master's thesis. Development was focused around several research goals, which include:

• Implementing a game design that allows visually impaired and sighted users to play the game in the same way, with the same level of challenge, and share a common gaming experience.
• Designing online multiplayer that allows for identity masking, at least in the sense that users in remote locations should not be aware of the visual status of their gaming counterpart.
• Designing alternative control schemes for improved accessibility to the visually impaired.
• Creating a fun, engaging game that relies on audio more than visuals to simulate an exciting experience.

The prototype version of the game was developed with team of seven Singapore and MIT undergraduates, and demonstrates all of the goals listed above except for multiplayer (we'll get that soon!). You can download the game here. If you are interested in helping out with formal testing and live in the Boston area, please contact me for details.

This is us, team Reverb, doing our thing. From left to right: Marc, Jingying, Bruce, Edwin, Dominic, and Paviter. Not pictured is Jim (sorry Jim!)

Elementalyst

Elementalyst was the first game ever to come out of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Games Lab. I helped advise the student team working on it. Sorry, no link!

Immune Attack

Immune Attack, from the Federation of American Scientists, is the first video game I ever worked on. It is a fantastic educational video game that teaches high school students about Immunology in a fun and engaging way, by letting users explore the human body and interact with cells. A far cry from the traditional classroom and textbook standard for learning biology, in Immune Attack you direct white blood cells to overcome bacterial and viral infections the way the normally do in real life.

For more on Immune Attack, please check out the game's website. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the team since it was such a big effort and involved so many people, so I just put up an old screen shot of when I was working on the game instead. Please keep in mind this looks very different from the latest versions.