Case
Studies

Collegeology

A suite of casual learning games for getting into college!

Collegeology

Collegeology is a suite of games designed to help underserved middle and high school students who are trying to navigate the labyrinth of the college admissions process.

Students at Foshay Learning Center High School in Los Angeles playtest an early version of Application Crunch.

The first in the series, a card game called Application Crunch, was an official selection of the 2011 IndieCade festival and is currently in use in many high schools across the country. The second game, Mission: Admission, is a free-to-play Facebook adaptation of Application Crunch that takes a student through college-bound activities, including applications, scholarship deadlines, and course selection. The game has an internal deadline of one week, which helps students learn time management as they prioritize, strategize, and execute moves. The third component of the suite is Future Bound, a mobile adventure game that challenges middle school students to confront and defeat any self-doubts that may stand in the way of their future success. A fourth game, slated to deal specifically with finances, began production in early 2013.

“Rather than sitting back and reading a pamphlet or a book... this is a way they can really engage with information.”
- Sean Bouchard, Collegeology Design Team

Collegeology was produced in collaboration with USC’s Game Innovation Lab and the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis.

One of the most uncommon and beneficial aspects of the Collegeology production process has been its tight integration with the students the game is designed for. From the early days of Application Crunch, the design and development teams have spent time with underserved high school students in Los Angeles. The exchange of ideas has been bilateral - the design team taught the "junior designers" the fundamentals of game design and play theory, and the students created small games that helped the designers step into the shoes of a high schooler and understand their unique challenges.

Especially illuminating student-designed games included a game about finding the school counselor who was never in his office and a game about afterschool jobs that made the problem of paying for college become a core part of Application Crunch.

Psychic Bunny has been extensively involved in the design of these games and in crafting their look to appeal not just to the parents, counselors, and decision-makers, but to the kids themselves.

DICE-T and MCIT

Counter-IED training for the US Army & Marine Corps.

DICE-T and MCIT

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are the leading cause of death for U.S. troops overseas. So when the U.S. Army decided to overhaul their approach to Counter-IED training, we did our part to create a next-generation training system. We have travelled all over the United States and worked with NATO allies in Europe to create and develop an interactive experience that encompasses live action, motion graphics, and narrative-based education.

NARRATIVE: Story is the common thread that unites all the parts of the training experience. The process of creating these characters and working them into the larger educational experience was a true challenge, and ultimately makes what could be a dry museum walkthrough into a gripping story that has since spilled out into other projects. The system continues to grow and evolve to handle current threats and the needs of warfighters, and has been adapted and translated into 4 languages.

INTERACTIVE: The battlefield is always shifting, and we work hard to keep up with the times by creating experiences that can grow with the users. That means open-ended, user-driven training that lets Squad Leaders train in the fashion that best suits them. Design and engineering on DICE, for dismounted patrols, presented unique challenges in abstracting a massive sandbox into something usable and educational in a short time frame. The result is something based on familiar game concepts like a first person shooter and a real-time strategy game, but removed just enough so that users must rethink their approach to playing in those environments.

Unfortunately, the system itself is still classified, but as soon as we can show you material, we will!

GRAPHICS: Motion graphics are the last link in the chain of the DICE-T/MCIT experience, graphically linking the interactive and live action content, and providing crucial information to an engaged audience. Standalone screens and video walls combine to create an immersive environment that draws you through all of the content leading up to the interactive experience, and clips can be mixed at runtime to suit the viewer's service branch and knowledge level. Moreover, this video content can be distributed independently to users who aren’t at one of the MCIT installations, creating extra value for the military, and extra training for the folks that need it most.

Midnight Daisy

A terrifying stereoscopic 3D short based on the urban legend of Midnight Daisy.

Midnight Daisy

Dana planned on a fun night out on the town - not getting kidnapped and taken to a basement with three very unsavory fellows. Luckily, she has a secret weapon - an urban legend about Midnight Daisy, the vengeful spirit that comes to the defense of women in trouble. In a last-ditch attempt to save herself, she draws a daisy in her own blood and sings the song rumored to call the spirit. When the lights flicker and the building quakes, Dana thinks her salvation has arrived...

"It'll all be over soon... [maniacal cackle]"– "Willie"

Just because we invented Midnight Daisy doesn’t mean she isn’t real. Ever since we decided to tell the tale of a vengeful spirit who fights (and kills) for wronged women, the production has been a little haunted. We shot the film in Stereoscopic 3D to get an extra layer of immersion – and we may have gotten more than we bargained for. Throughout writing and pre-production we’ve pulled from local legends, and our location, fondly referred to as “the murder basement,” has the feel of an urban legend waiting to happen.

"We totally had the A.D. convinced that our set was haunted."– Asa Shumskas-Tait, Director

You’d have been hard pressed to convince a crew member to sing the tune that calls Midnight Daisy. Since then, we’ve had our fair share of technical glitches, and that’s to be expected with stereo effects. But playback keeps freezing on one particular shot of Daisy, reaching out of the screen, pleading, grasping, desperate for revenge. We may be the first ones to tell a tale of Midnight Daisy, but we won’t be the last...

Directors