Aramco Brat Robert Worrell Designs Winning Video Game Idea
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Author: Zach Hall
Released 9 February 2005
If a blind squirrel can find an acorn, then the video game rodent in “Squirrel Squabble,” can use one for a weapon against enemies such as the sumo-wrestling squirrel.
That idea helped three interns from the University of Nevada, Reno, beat 97 teams from schools around the world in the 2005 Independent Games Festival’s student showcase.
They were interning for Nevada Interactive, a small Internet-consulting company owned by Jeff Helfand of Reno.
It was the first time a team from UNR entered the contest and the first time an internship of this kind, a brainchild of Silicon Valley transplant Helfand, was available in Reno.
“As an entrepreneur with a certain fiscal sense, I wanted to see what I could find from the local university,” Helfand said. “To go from a little concept to putting some money into getting us some space and development tools and software, to winning the entire thing the first time out was a pretty big leap. We were pretty blown away.”
The three interns, David Leistiko, Robert Worrell and Clinton Siu, learned about the internship from a story in the Reno Gazette-Journal in July. They were selected out of a group of nearly 60 students.
Leistiko, 26, and Worrell, 21, are both computer science majors expected to graduate in May. Siu, 22, is a marketing major also expected to graduate this spring.
“When we were making our game, we thought it was pretty much on par with some of the past winners,” said Worrell, the assistant programmer on the project. “And as we went along with the project, it was like ‘Hey, this is actually pretty good.’”
The result was a simple game with a 1980s style, Helfand said. Players with a taste for blood and guts won’t get that from “Squirrel Squabble.”
A band of acorn-thieving squirrels rob the hero squirrel, and the object is to get the nuts back. Characters include a sumo-wrestling squirrel and the evil leader of the band of thieves.
The idea was spawned from a picture Siu — the artist in the project — had drawn that became the main game board. The idea was to build a game with a sense of humor.
“We wanted something that we can do comically so you don’t have the restraints of having to do it realistically. You can have that kind of humor that you couldn’t get otherwise,” said Leistiko, the lead programmer on the project.
But none of the game’s creators thought winning the contest was a real possibility.
“After we finished and looking at some of the previous years, I was confident that we would place somewhere,” Siu said. “The programmers did a solid job, so I wasn’t too worried. But I was surprised that we got first.”
Now the trick will be making some money off the product. With only four levels, the team said the product that won the competition is far from commercial quality.
Helfand said it would be a long shot to take the game to market, but he is still shopping for a company that will publish the game.
The group will get a chance to show of the game in San Francisco in March at the Game Developers Conference. The group was invited after winning the student contest.
“Of course, we would like to see it make money,” Siu said. “But, I think, this project was just specifically for this competition. And, of course, we can put it on our resumes and portfolios.”
The internship has already paid dividends for Leistiko and Worrell, who both were hired as programmers for 5000ft. Inc., a Reno-based video-game maker.
Helfand’s goal was to help students with an interest in programming after he saw a need for technology internships in Northern Nevada nearly a year ago.
“I told them, the day they all met each other, ‘If we are successful, at the end of the day, you will have started up a company and I will be applying for a job at your company,” Helfand said. “That is still what I hope will happen here.”
Aramco Brat Robert Worrell graduated from Dhahran in 1998.
Read more about the Squirrel Squabble Story.