By Andrew Ripley-Suiter
A 1980s video game has a new life, thanks to WSU Vancouver students.
Thirty-two digital technology and culture seniors have restored the 1986 game ′′Amnesia′′ as part of their capstone course. The goal of the project was to prepare students for work after graduation, while under faculty guidance.
′′Amnesia′′ was selected as the restoration project for the DTC seniors long before the fall semester started. The Electronic Literature Lab on campus, managed by Director and Professor of Digital Technology and Culture Dene Grigar, is known for housing the largest collection of interactive media in the world. The lab has also saved roughly 700 flash artworks since the termination of Adobe Flash Player in January 2020.
The only text-based adventure game published by Electronic Arts and written by renowned science fiction author Thomas M. Disch, ′′Amnesia′′ follows the story of a character who wakes up in a Manhattan hotel room with no clothes, money or recollection of his life. Players must unravel the events that led up to his current state.
Because of ELL’s reputation for restoring electronic works and connections made by Grigar, the program received access to the estate of Disch, who died in 2008. The estate requested the students recreate his iconic EA video game.
At the start of the project, students were organized based on their academic interests and specialties, which the DTC program calls “superpowers," including skills such as game development, web development, design, video, animation and promotion.
Students began by studying Disch’s original 450- page manuscript. According to Andrew Thompson, DTC major and the project’s manager, most of the written content was not included in the original game because of EA’s insufficient budget. Students had to sift through existing material and choose elements that were critical to “Amnesia's" plot.
“The game had enough content to fit on six floppy disks, but they only published two because they didn’t have the budget to release that much... Our job was to take the game and modernize it in some way so we can now release it for a public audience once again,” Thompson said. “And how we did that was up to us. So that’s where the class started.”
Thompson said he and his peers worked 20 to 25 hours per week. Collectively, they accumulated more than 6,300 hours, with a dedicated 1,700 hours from the six-person game development team.
Alongside their achievements in media history studies and game design, students also said the project encouraged them to refine their communication and teamwork skills.
“You can teach design skills easier than you can teach people skills. Learning how to take feedback and give feedback without getting your feelings hurt and communicating was really vital for a work environment,” said Ceenan Calzadilla, a member of the web development team.
An electronic success story
The Creative Media and Digital Culture program, founded in 1997, has become a booming success as it enters its 25th anniversary, offering DTC classes for many students on campus. Through the major’s capstone requirement, also known as senior seminar, students in their fourth year are offered the opportunity to work for external organizations while using the university’s available tech resources. Dene Grigar, director of CMDC, said the objective of senior seminar is to transition students out of the classroom and into professional job settings.
“No one can ever tell me that [the program is] not turning out thinkers, scholars,” Grigar said. “[They are] doing important work in media history, cultural history, literary history, art history.”
After completing the ′′Amnesia′′ project, students got professional experience by presenting the game to a board of clients. Grigar said the CMDC program has a 90% placement rate, as some students are graduating with jobs already offered, largely because of the capstone course’s overall success.
“I have seven students leaving the semester with jobs in hand before graduation day—before grades are even in,” Grigar said.
The CMDC program’s restoration of ′′Amnesia′′ is available on its website at amnesia-restored.com. While the project has ended, another began this spring, as graduating seniors work to restore another classic video game