Teamwork is a core DigiPen credo. Ed Groover, 21, rubs his goatee as troubleshooter Stephen Lee, 22, punches keys to sort through a malfunction in the students' shooter game, Fate of the Heroes. ''It's not a bug,'' says Lee, who created five games in his first three months at the school. He concentrates on a score of computer-code lines on a Mac screen. ''If it was, I could find it.'' ''The lone ranger has no place in this industry,'' says Comair. ''Soloist game developers are obsolete,'' concurs Merrick, noting that it took 28 people to create Nintendo's wildly successful Donkey Kong Country.

Teams are billed on opening credits of all DigiPen-created games, none of which will be released commercially but which can be demo'd by students for prospective employers. For the Zelda-like role-playing adventure Dungeons of Passage, Emory Georges, 21, designed aspects of the enemy — from appearance to personality; Nathaniel Gibson, 18, created the interface; and Lee edited its maps.

Still, star quality shines through. Dungeons' mysterious labyrinths and sorcerer's-apprentice hero reflect the artistic wizardry of programmer Patrick Meehan, 18, who has produced cartoon pilots for Nickelodeon. Mark Vaughan, 26, and Ryan Higa, 20, devised a program that enables characters to walk, run, crawl, fall, and fire guns, which has become an ''engine'' that other classmates use in their games.

Will their training be all for naught by graduation, however, given that technological advances are likely to outpace their schooling? No, contends Comair. By starting with videogames — which are becoming more and more like interactive movies — DigiPen teaches the foundation for all high-tech programming platforms, current and future, he says. ''There will always be a CPU behind them, a question of RAM organization, and a bit stream of zeros and ones.''

Originally posted Jun 30, 1995 Published in issue #281-282 Jun 30, 1995 Order article reprints
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