2008 Woodie Awards
Students' hobby becomes so much more
Haley Brown
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Alnaimi's obsession with video games started at a young age. He, like many other younger brothers, looked up to his older brothers. When he saw them playing video, he wanted to play them, too. After watching them with the games, he begged his aunt to take him to a store and buy him one.
"One day I went with my aunt to a store and pointed at a game. Luckily I picked a game that I liked. I've been playing them ever since," said Alnaimi.
After playing video games for years, Alnaimi knew he wanted to expand his hobby into something more challenging. For him, creating video games would pose a challenge, especially considering he had never modeled or animated characters before. He also lacked the knowledge of forming and running a company. He hoped that one day he would change all of that.
When he came to the United States to go to college at Kansas Wesleyan University he started to buy software to help him create a video game. There were no classes at Wesleyan to teach him to animate so he taught himself.
His favorite software to use is 3D Studio Max. 3D Studio Max is used for 3D modeling, animation, and game development. The program also has built in tutorials that helped him learn how to do everything that he needed to know. Slowly but surly he started to learn the software and animate by using the tutorials; however, Alnaimi still had to learn the business aspects to owning a video game company.
During his junior year at Wesleyan, a new class started called Intro to Computer Gaming. The class focused on learning about different game consoles and their games and on running a company.
Also during his junior year he and a couple of other students from Wesleyan attended a gaming conference. The conference focused mainly on the business aspects of the gaming industry. He was taught how to brainstorm, how the departments work, payroll, etc.
"I was taught to always keep the player entertained, and that is what I plan to do," said Alnaimi.
After finally learning everything he needed to learn, Alnaimi set out to find students that would be interested in helping him create his company.
In order to find students with an interest in more than just playing video games, he set out to find students in his Intro to Computer Gaming class. In the class he found Devin Frederking.
Frederking had never modeled or animated a character in his life, but he was passionate for video games. Alnaimi has taught Frederking everything he needed to learn about animation. Frederking and Alnaimi have been working on their game for nearly six months.
"I never thought I would be modeling or animating a character, but now I am. And I feel like I am part of the game industry," said Frederking.
Now after working on the game for nearly 6 months they have reached a quarter point in their head way of completing the game. Alnaimi has high hopes that a proto type of the game will be created by Christmas.
He does not have a specific console picked out yet, but it will be one of the main stream consoles such as Playstation2, Nintendo Gamecube, and the Microsoft X-box 360. As far as the plot of the game is concerned, it is highly classified and is restricted to authorized personnel only.
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