Former IU students start video game company

Most class projects die at the end of the semester, never to be heard from again.\nBut for three former IU telecommunications students, a video game they designed for class has turned into a full-time media-design business.\nBloomington-based Studio Cypher was founded two and a half years ago by IU graduates Will Emigh, Nathan Mishler and Ian Pottmeyer. The company specializes in the design of alternate reality games, a new genre of games that was inspired by the 2001 Steven Spielberg film, “A.I.” And their work is starting to draw attention.\nEmigh, Mishler and Pottmeyer recently created six games for “The Ancient Americas” exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago. The games were designed to show how innovation can cause cultural change, Pottmeyer said.\n“One of the games is a hunting game, and you start with a rabbit stick and you can’t throw it very far ... then you can get a spear and hunt deer, then (a weapon) to hunt buffalo,” Pottmeyer said. \nThe trio’s game, “Entropic Space,” was also a finalist in this year’s JayIsGames Game Design Contest. \nThe founding members of Studio Cypher decided to focus on alternate reality games because the genre is new and allows for experimentation, Pottmeyer said. What started as a part-time side project after graduating has now become their primary career.\n“We had so much fun creating (the game) in class that we looked around to see if anyone else was doing something similar,” Emigh said. “There were one or two companies in the field and several amateurs, but it seemed like an open market to us.” \nEdward Castronova, an IU associate professor of telecommunications who taught the trio when they were students, described alternate reality games as taking ideas from board games, but bringing them into society. \n“Imagine playing Pacman in Manhattan where your phone shows you where the yellow dots and cherries are ... you go down Fifth Avenue collecting points while being chased by imaginary ghosts that you see on your phone,” Castronova said.\nThere is a need for a new kind of video game that not only entertains, but breaks the monotony of life, Castronova said. Alternate reality games provide that service, he said.\n“It’s a bland world sometimes. ... But what if, while waiting for the bus, there were fun interactive games you could play that would enliven life’s dull moments?” Castronova said.\nMishler said so far it has been hard for the company to make money by just designing games, so all three programmers still work from home offices. And in the meantime, Studio Cypher takes on more practical projects, including educational and instructional programming assignments for other companies, in order to earn money to work on video games, he said. \nThe studio’s first game took a year to complete, Emigh said. But subsequent games have taken shorter amounts of time because of the team’s increasing levels of experience. Also, they started focusing on shorter games. \nMany of the games are available for free on the company’s Web site, studiocypher.com. \nBut for as long and complicated as alternate reality game design can be, Mishler said, Studio Cypher keeps a few principles in mind when making a game.\n“A lot of games are just about shooting things,” Mishler said. “We want to show that the quickest and easiest way to solve a problem is not by picking up a gun. We want people to interact with each other and get to some place deeper. ... Our ultimate goal is to find a way to better the world.”\nEmigh said he thinks the company has a future based on what it has achieved so far.\n“We haven’t accomplished all that we want to do yet ... and we’ve definitely had some missteps because (the genre) is so new,” he said. “But by the same token, we’ve been very influential in a developing field.”