Stay hungry, stay foolish”

I grad­u­at­ed from the Utrecht School of the Arts in 2002. Now, less than sev­en years lat­er, I am men­tor­ing a group of five stu­dents who will be doing the same come Sep­tem­ber this year. I took a pho­to of them today, here it is:

Bright young bunch

From left to right, here’s who they are and what they’re up to:

  • Chris­ti­aan is tech lead on Hol­lan­dia, an action adven­ture game inspired by Dutch folk­lore. His research looks at ways to close the gap between cre­atives and tech­nol­o­gists in small teams, using agile techniques.
  • Kjell is design­ing a series of exper­i­men­tal games using voice as their only input. He’s research­ing what game mechan­ics work best with voice control.
  • Max­ine is game design­er on the afore­men­tioned Hol­lan­dia game. Her research looks at the trans­la­tion of the play expe­ri­ence of phys­i­cal toys to dig­i­tal games. (In of Hol­lan­dia, you’ll be using a Wiimote to con­trol the spin­ning top used by the heroine.)
  • Paul is build­ing a physics-based plat­form puz­zle game for two play­ers. His research looks at the design of mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tive play.
  • Eva is mak­ing a space sim­u­la­tion game with real­is­tic physics and com­plex con­trols. She’s research­ing what kinds of fun are elicit­ed by such games.

Prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, men­tor­ing these guys means that I see them once a week for a 15-minute ses­sion. In this we dis­cuss the past week’s progress and their plans for the next. They’ve set their own briefs, and are expect­ed to be high­ly self-reliant. My task con­sists of mak­ing sure they stay on track and their work is rel­e­vant, both from an edu­ca­tion­al and a pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tive. It’s chal­leng­ing work, but a lot of fun. It forces me to make explic­it the stuff I’ve picked up pro­fes­sion­al­ly. It’s also a lot about devel­op­ing a sense for where each stu­dent indi­vid­u­al­ly can improve and encour­ag­ing them to chal­lenge them­selves in those areas. 

I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing what they’ll deliv­er come Sep­tem­ber, when it’s their turn to grad­u­ate, and go out to con­quer the world.

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.