Student-owned company creates video game for robotics competitions
Seth Greenstein hasn’t finished college, but he already has a decade of experience as a computer programmer. Now his company, Diamond Bullet Studios, is creating products designed to lead more teenagers toward engineering and technology.
Greenstein, who will graduate from Furman in 2014 with a degree in computer programming, said the company’s two recent products, “Catalyst 2012” and “Catalyst 2013,” were not designed with profit in mind but were released for free to thousands of high school teams participating on FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international nonprofit that organizes robotics competitions for elementary, middle and high school students with the goal of inspiring future leaders in science and technology. For high school students, the competition involves designing, building and programming 100-pound robots to play interactive games.
“The whole program is designed to encourage students to pursue STEM fields – to get excited about science, technology, engineering and math,” Greenstein said.
Co-owner Curtis Todd, now a senior at Southern Wesleyan University in Central, said the Upstate-based company is a labor of love. “We’re not really making a whole lot of money, but it’s a passion for us,” he said. “Each time we talk to kids, they tell us how much they enjoy the game. It’s all about inspiring these kids go to into engineering when they are older.”
An early start
Diamond Bullet got its start when the high school friends worked together on a FIRST Robotics Competition team. As sophomores in 2007, they decided to use their growing technology skills to design and produce video games.
They thought they might create three games in a year, but it took three years and thousands of hours of effort to complete “Contention,” their first game.
“We thought, ‘How hard can it be?’ But it turned out it was harder than the we thought,” Greenstein said.
Selling the game was an afterthought, but the teenagers learned valuable lessons about creating content, writing scripts, adding textures, and coordinating music and sound effects. They also learned about “scope creep,” continually adding features that delayed completion.
The company ended up selling a handful of game DVDs to friends. Three founding members – Todd, Greenstein and Eric Bickle Jr. – decided to create another game, this time something quick and simple. Two weeks later, “Mower,” a lawn-mowing simulator, was released and became a modest success on the Xbox Live Indie Game Marketplace, with 6,000 downloading it for free and 1,000 paying for the game.
Then, since Todd was mentoring a high school FIRST Robotics team, Diamond Bullet created a robot driving simulator to help the team practice for competition.
Teaming up with FIRST
After the simulator was showcased at the state competition, it quickly escalated to the top of the international FIRST organization, which will host more than 350,000 students on more than 32,000 teams this year. FIRST estimates that “Catalyst 2012” was released to more than half a million students around the world.
The game and its subsequent version, “Catalyst 2013,” earned an ardent following, and Todd said when a live Web feed announced that Diamond Bullet would be creating “Catalyst 2014” for release in January, “fans were screaming.”
“We were impressed by their initiative and their product,” said Kate Pilotte, a manager with the FIRST Robotics Competition. “We also loved the idea that they are FRC alumni.”
After releasing “Catalyst 2014,” Greenstein and Todd aren’t sure if the company will continue doing business.
“We just brought in a new 3-D artist and a new programmer, and we’re trying to expand right now,” Greenstein said. “There is lots of interest even though we are not promising pay. We put thousands of hours into this and we don’t get paid nearly an hourly wage for that, just a flat fee for the game.”
Graduation may bring the need for a higher-paying job, but Todd and Greenstein said their hours spent on the company have already paid big dividends. “Looking at all we’ve been able to do, having a company, working with FIRST – I’m pretty confident we can do what a job will require,” Todd said.
“Either we’ll get something off the ground after graduation or we’ll continue this as a hobby,” Greenstein said. “We realize graduation will change how things are working, but our mindset is, we’ve learned a lot, released games to the whole world, and we’re happy with what we’ve done.”
