Electric Racer

Title: Electric Racing
Date created: Spring 2010
Genre: 3D Racing
Team Size: 5
Role in creating the game: Programmer
System Requirements: Unity 3D installed

Information: An intergenerational literacy game made for our client, The Electric Company.

Team members:
Producer/3D Modeler: Rahul Azad
3D Modeler: Mina Yoo
UI/Texture Artist: Steve Geist
Game Designer: Amy Goodwin
Faculty Advisors: Drew Davidson and Jesse Schell

Created using the Unity 3D engine. Electric Racing is an intergenerational educational game that aims to teach children ages 6-9 about phonics. Our client, the Electric Company in cooperation with Sesame Workshop, requested a game that enables parents and kids to play together and foster communication between the two players. Since The Electric Company show promotes literacy via phonics-based education material, we decided to create a racing game that would teach the children the different pronounciations of letters. For example, the letter G can have a soft sound as in "giant" or a hard sound as in "gate". We did a lot of user playtesting to ensure the game was fun for both children and adults. One of the early issues we discovered was that hand motor-control skills varied greatly between 6 and 9 year olds. Six year olds had some trouble with controlling the car while nine year olds could handle driving without difficulty.

My team during the Spring 2010 semester created a vertical slice prototype of the racing game. During the semester, I was the programmer on the team. I had to leave the project for my internship over the summer. In response, Sesame Workshop hired 2 other programmers from the ETC to make the game into a fully working product that is now published and free for download on the Electric Company website.

Download Electric Racer