Prepare to be “OutSmarted”
Every family has one, that person who knows everything, that human encyclopedia that can call up obscure facts at will and dominate the game table every time you play Trivial Pursuit on New Year’s Eve. But what if there was a game that levelled the playing field – a game where it doesn’t matter if you know that the “pound” key on your keyboard is called an “octothorpe”. Thanks to some Mohawk grads, some faculty, and a bunch of students, that game-changer is just around the corner.
Dave Millard graduated from Mohawk in 1993 from Advertising and Graphic Design. In 2007 he had an idea. He came up with a game that instead of having only one correct answer for every question, each question would have at least six correct answers. For example, “Name the colours of the spectrum?” Each player must then write down between one and six of the available answers (depending on the roll of the die) and the player (or group of players) with the most correct answers gets the point, with the game’s eventual winner, having the most points earned over the course of the game.
That’s about as far as he got at the time. Life got busy and Dave shelved the idea with the intent of developing it further on some rainy day. That day came unexpectedly in 2009 when he was laid off from his job with a marketing agency. Out of work and with time to spare Dave decided to take another look at his trivia game idea.
With the help of a few friends Dave built on his original idea and created OutSmart, a trivia game that increases the odds of every player winning the game because no one person has the monopoly on the answers.
“This is the only game where knowing all the correct answers does not guarantee you’ll win,” says Dave.
He took the prototype to sports bars and wherever else he could think of to get people to try it, and discovered that his formula seemed to work. The response to the game was overwhelmingly positive, he says, and that’s was enough to convince him that the idea was worth developing. All he needed were people who were willing to back him.
He founded a company called Innovention Concepts Inc. and turned to a trivia expert, someone who’d been one of the original developers of Trivial Pursuit. After 15 minutes of playing, the developer was sold and Dave had a supporter for his game.
Up to this point, OutSmart was developed as a board game, one that you could pack in your car and take to the cottage or bring out for family game night. But Dave wanted something that would appeal to the growing online gaming crowd as well, something that could be used on a variety of platforms and that would be accessible from popular social media like Facebook.
That’s when he decided to turn to Mohawk for help. In the spring of 2010 he pitched the idea to some folks at the College’s applied research institute, now called iDeaWorks. One of those people was Brian Minaji, a faculty member in the Software Development program and a Mohawk grad from 1986 Computer Systems Technology.
They were excited about it, says Dave, but didn’t have the resources to commit to it at the time. A few months later, Dave partnered with Jean-Paul Rehr and Heather Viana of Kanu Inc. to take the game online. In the fall of 2010, Jean-Paul and Brian got together to discuss how Mohawk could help. iDeaWorks now had access to funding through the FedDev program that could propel the project.
With funding secured, Brian began assembling the team. Allan Jude of NearSourceIT, a 2006 Mohawk grad in the Network Engineering & Security Analysis program, part-time Mohawk faculty would be the technical lead. Brian and Allan led the Mohawk side of the project, along with newly minted Software Engineering grad Andrew Saudino, and Lloyd Waddell, a Co-op student in the Software Development program. The Mohawk team worked with the Kanu team to design the game software and the Mohawk team began development on the software in January.
To get more students involved, the team came up with an idea to ask students to submit questions as part of a contest to generate content for the game. Co-op student Jory Ohayon from the Graphic Design program created the poster that was put up at all campuses to generate interest. The contest was a success with Mohawk students submitting more than 1,500 questions, of which more than 900 were approved for the game. The winning students, those with the most approved questions, (names will be included with photo) were announced in mid-May.
“Mohawk built the motor and the transmission. Now we’re looking for Kanu to assist in putting the customized car body onto it,” says Dave.
Once the game is dressed up and ready to go, it will be launched on Facebook and Twitter, which will hopefully happen within a few months. A smartphone version is also planned. Regional versions of the game will be created so people who play in other countries will not only get it in their language but also with questions that are specific to them. The board game version will be available this Fall and is being distributed in Canada by Kroeger.
Garrett Tyler (left), Wayne Orgar, David Fillion, Jory Ohayon and Jason Harris were the winner of the Mohawk Trivia Contest. The students were part of a contest to come up with questions for the online version of a board game called OutSmart. Top prize winner Garrett took home an iPad 2 for having 311 questions accepted. In total, Mohawk students came up with more than 1589 questions, of which 936 were approved.
