Michael Dumas

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1103
November 11, 2014
I think what going well in the paper is the interview questions because on the different opinions
about the club. Some of the feedback I got helps the paper like the coding help understand what
going on in the club.
Game Developers Club
In the United States 58 percent of Americans play video games. To make these games you need
game developer and programmers. The discourse community I pick is the game developer club
at UNCC. They meet every Tuesday at 6:30pm at the health and human service building. In the
club we learn how to make games and sometime alter games to try to make it better. I go through
some of swales discourse community characteristic in this club. Swale six characteristics are
Common goals, Intercommunication, Participatory mechanisms, One or more genres, Lexis, and
Old timers vs. newbie.
Here is some code that we use for one of the games we are working on.
//Did you run into an enemy?
if(other.CompareTag("Enemy")){
//Destory the enemy
Destroy(other.gameObject);
//Decrement your lives and update the game
lives --;
life_text.text = "Lives Left: " + lives;

//If you run out of lives, tell Game_Timer you lost

//and destroy the player script/diable the gameobject
if(lives <= 0){
Game_Timer.time.lost = true;
this.enabled = false;
Destroy(this.GetComponent<Player_Controller>());

I went to a couple of meeting before but I have only observed one of the meetings. In my
observation there were a lot fewer people than the first time I went. Basically the whole time I
was observing everybody was on their computers doing different things. One person was
downloading unity so he can work on a game. Unity is a powerful rendering engine fully
integrated with a complete set of intuitive tools and rapid workflows to create interactive 3D and
2D content; easy multiplatform publishing. Unity sucks its a bad engine (carmer). Another
guy was having trouble installing unity on his computer because he had Linux on his laptop.
Linux is a computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source
software development and distribution. One of the guys in the meeting was reading a coding
book to help make games. Throughout the meeting the vice president was showing us a game
that everybody was work on. He was showing us the different thing we can do and he was show
use the code in the game. He was describing each line of code in detail in the game. A couple of
moment in the meeting I could tell that some people were bored.

In the game developer club many members have common goals. Everybody in the game
developer club wants to make games. They also want to know how to make the games too. All

the members are encouraged to use unity because it is the best game engine out right now. Many
of the people I think join the group because they want to have a career in game development.
The biggest common goal in the game developer club is developing games (Carmer).
I believe that every discourse community needs communication. In the game developer club you
need communication to know upcoming event and meetings. They usually communicate through
email and Facebook. They also have a website, www.orgsync.com/68559/chapter, where they
have events and information about the club. As a member you need to communicate with other
developer in the club because some members have more experience and knowledge than other
members. We communicate through orgsync and email (Breaton).
The mandatory mechanism for the game developer club is standard. Member will attend meeting
and member can do the game jam events. The game jam is a completion that player join group
and make game in 48 hours and they have to follow a theme. Even though its not mandatory
they recommend member to do the game jam if they are really want to have a career in game
development.

The lexis of the game developer club varies from person to person. I dont use much lexis in the
game developer club (Breaton). Most of the lexis in the club is computer lingo and computer
languages. They dont use jargon (lexis) in the club because it is an entry level club; they use
terms that an average person can understand (carmer). If people dont know the lexis they will
most likely ask or look it up (Breaton).

There are some old timers and newbies in the club. The old timers are the board officers of the
club. Matthew Ballard (President), Ryan Carpenter (Vice-President), Ryan Cook (Chief of
Design) Michael Pedersen (Treasurer). Everybody else in the club is either newbies or old
timers. The old timers have to teach the newbies how to make games. Some of the newbies
may know more than the old timer it depending if they been making game before coming to
college.

I Interviewed two guy, Dakota Carmer and Nick Breaton, who joined the club and here some of
their answers. Question1: What is the very first game you have made? The very first game I
made is an ice cream shop game. You have a random combination of ice cream, topping, and cup
or cone that you had to make for the costumer before time run out (Breaton). The game I made
is a two player fighter game that I created end of senior year for AP computer science. The game
was in java from scratch and I used music from the internet probably illegal and you fight each
other (Carmer). Question 2: Why did you join the game developer club? I thought it will be
interesting (Carmer). I wanted to see what other people will make (Breaton). Question 3:
What game engine other than unity do you use? I use Unreal engine 4 (carmer). I use
crytek engine (Breaton).

Through my analysis I see that the members of the club love games. Anyone can make a game if
the know what to code and understand what you are coding. The discourse of the game
developer club allowed me to work with other creators and share my games with other people

around the world. The game developer club is the best way to learn how to make games and be
more social.

Work Cited
Breaton, Nick. Personal Interview. 17 November, 2014
Carmer, Dakota. Personal Interview. 17 November, 2014
Swales, John. The Concept of a Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and
Workplace Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print