By Shaylyn Austin
Editor-In-Chief
While the technology that goes into the creation of a game is seldom considered, a group of Costa juniors and seniors has gone behind the scenes of the gaming world, demonstrating its design and coding prowess.
Senior Arani Bhattacharyay launched the California licensed company, SourByte LLC, a gaming industry that is made up of juniors and seniors, mainly from Mira Costa, in June. Since then, members of SourByte have worked endlessly to conceptualize and develop their first mobile phone game, “Artifact,” which is available as of today in beta upon request.
“It’s more of a community than a business,” Chief Executive Officer Bhattacharyay said. “I feel like it’s special because there’s nothing really like it around here that promotes entrepreneurship. We pride ourselves on the fact that we decided what we wanted to do, and everyone’s in a position that they want to be in, so I feel like it’s a good, well-run organization.”
SourByte is made up of three sub-teams comprised of design, sound and programming. The design and sound teams are responsible for illustrating the graphics and generating the noises for the application, respectively. Then, the programmers create the code to transfer those ideas into the game. As chief product officer, senior Koh Shoda collaborates with Bhattacharyay to combine the work of each team into a single app.
“The largest obstacle I have encountered is that we were often times falling behind our projected deadlines,” Shoda said. “We would have to rewrite our timeline for the game production, and it was pretty stressful. The design team has a lot of the manual labor, so even though they are very capable graphic artists, they were often times falling behind.”
SourByte’s programmers built every piece of code for “Artifact” from the ground up, meaning they did not take any information from other sources. Bhattacharyay also developed the embed code for iOS and Java so that the game could be transferred to both Apple and Android phones.
“That’s been kind of a brutal process, but it’s been fun,” Bhattacharyay said.
“Artifact” features eight different characters and three interactive maps. The player must defeat an onslaught of “leminions” and “lime-inions” throughout his continuous journey, collecting various artifacts along the way.
While the initial game will be free, it will have an option to purchase “power-ups” and advantages during play. The tentative official release date is set for Nov. 26, when it will be available for download on all mobile phones.
“‘Artifact’ is casual fun,” Shoda said. “It’s like a quick snack. It’s one of those games that you play on your bed or on the toilet. Anyone that likes new flavors of Doritos should download this app. It’s a ‘frickin’ ridiculous game.”
SourByte’s business squad, led by Chief Operation Officer senior Nick Kane, is responsible for social media relations and finances. Over the summer, Kane generated a Facebook group, where followers can view SourByte’s latest projects.
“We have all these different types of people working on different tasks, so we’re really getting the resources we need to create a video game,” Kane said. “Just organizing that and seeing it being put into effect has been a really cool, unique experience. Our main goal right now is basically to advertise and fully develop ‘Artifact.’”
Kane recently developed an indieogogo website that displays and explains “Artifact’s” various features in order to promote the game. Sponsors can also go to the website to donate to SourByte’s developments.
“I really like how quickly ‘Artifact’ was able to mobilize and initiate our stipulated plans,” Shoda said. “Our group of friends has attempted similar projects in the past, but this is the first time we have created a finished product. Once we got the ball rolling, we were in sync like clockwork. I think it is pretty cool how synchronized the team really is.”
At first, SourByte’s founders wanted to run the company as a business. However, the seniors of SourByte have now decided to hand off the rights to the underclassmen once they graduate.
“We’ve decided to pass on SourByte to a next generation of Costa students so that they can hopefully build off of our current work and gain the insights that we did,” Shoda said.
Although the recruiting to be a part of this team is selective, based on experience in coding, design and business, the company encourages any current sophomores and juniors who are enthusiastic about SourByte to check it out.
“It’s all about sharing the experience that we had, which was awesome,” Bhattacharyay said. “We hope that for year to year to come, they can produce an even better product than we did and so forth and grow as we did.”
“This internship is a great opportunity for me to get experience using the technologies in the architectural field today and to work on real world problems,” Smith said.
Lisa Valicente/ La Vista
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