“Would you be interested in having a team of college students design and develop an idea of yours, over the course of 11 weeks, and provide you with all of their work at the end of the summer, for free?”

As they say, it’s an offer you can’t refuse, so when Mass Digi‘s Managing Director Monty Sharma asked, we said yes.

The Summer Innovation Program

Every summer, Mass Digi offers a Summer Innovation Program to college students interested in game development. For the students, it’s an opportunity to hone design, development, animation, audio, and production skills over 11 weeks, from June to August. It’s an amazing resume builder, not to mention a one-of-a-kind learning experience.

And for local game design startups like PBnGames, it’s a chance to mentor the next generation of game designers, and get some free labor to boot. It’s a win-win situation.

Week 6: The Halfway Point

Yesterday Jessica, Greg, and I met with the student team to review their work on Zeebi Lab. I’ll sum up our reactions in one word: WOW. In 6 weeks, they built a prototype, designed a series of new Zeebis, and best of all, they were already thinking ahead to what we’ll need when they’re finished with their work.

They approached us about creating code that could be easily swapped out to update Zeebi behaviors, a long list of potential future design and development ideas, and a host of other ideas ranging from additional levels to Zeebi merchandising. Sure, selling Zeebi stuffed animals might be getting a little ahead of ourselves, but I love the way they’re thinking!

We’ll make sure to update with their final work, come August. Hard to believe they’re more than halfway through the summer.

Back in March, we entered a game challenge, pitching our game Zeebi Lab to dozens of investors, game companies, and other business owners over the course of two days at the MIT NERD center. To our great delight, we won 2nd place!

Here’s the proud PBnGames team with our trophy.