Princeton sophomore José Rico is gaming’s next big thing

José M. Rico has always a way with technology. As a kid growing up in Santa Ana, Costa Rica, he hacked his first-generation iPod so it could play movies and video games.

Now as a sophomore, the ELE major has won Princeton’s prestigious Dale Award ($5,000) to create his own game this summer.

Read on to find out more about the project that could be the gaming world’s next big thing – and see some exclusive, pre-release scenes.

How did you come up with your idea to create a new video game?

It’s a long story. I’ve been wanting to make a game since I was 12, when I really got into gaming.

What was your favorite game when you were 12, and what did you like about it?

Warcraft 3, which is not the same as World of Warcraft, OK! It had a lot of story behind it, a lot of lore. It was very interesting to me because the backstory was very good. It also had super nice cinematics, the animation seemed really life-like.

It was special because players could make mods for the game, meaning you could create your own game within the game. I was really excited about that. When I was 13, I started making my own mods for Warcraft 3. They were simply just fun games, with bosses (computer-controlled enemy characters) that you’d have to beat, and really cool player abilities, and everything would explode! That’s how I learned how to program actually. My high school didn’t have any coding or computer science classes.

Creating a game has been a longtime goal for you then.

Yes, after I started Warcraft 3, some of my friends started playing the mods I designed. They said, “Oh, these are kind of cool.” So I posted the mods in some online communities, and they got a lot of views and ratings.

What was your most popular mod?

It’s called Frostbite Caverns, I was very pretentious with my titles back then (laughs). It was basically all boss fights, I really liked making those for some reason.

How did this lead to the next step to you making a whole game?

I have a really good friend from before all this, Lucian Obregon, who also likes games. Well, he didn’t like Frostbite Caverns, but whatever. Anyway, we decided we wanted to make a mod for Minecraft. He’s an artist-type, so we made a perfect team. He made the graphics, and I coded it. He studies digital animation in Costa Rica now. We even got halfway through a Minecraft mod where players could go to the moon in Minecraft. Then one day we said, “Enough of Minecraft, we want to make our own game!” That’s how we took it to the next level. We were about 15, 16 by then. I’m going to do this project with him, I already told him all about it.

Do you have any idea what the game’s theme will be?

Not quite yet, it’s one of the hardest parts. We have many ideas floating around, most are pretty weird. I don’t want to reveal anything specific yet, but it’ll probably be influenced by my friend’s graphic style, which usually evokes dystopian or “cyberpunk” elements.

When you presented your project to the Dale Award committee, how did you explain your idea?

The game will be influenced by the place we will be working, back home. I found this special software, map a 3D model of an object from pictures. So for the Dale project, I plan to go to four different locations in Costa Rica, some landscapes, and get some 3D models that will be used in the game.

Making 3D games is really time consuming, usually there’s a huge team working on the graphics, and a ton of coders just working all day. I don’t have the resources for that. We’ll probably use the 3D models for short cut scenes, find a way to integrate it into the story that well are going to tell.

We’re already brainstorming what the game is going to be about, we’ll probably start working in the beginning of June, and finish it by September.

Do you think your academic interests relate to or help your gaming?

They do, but I was worried that the [Dale] people would think they related too much… that it was just some coding project, but it’s not. For me games are an artistic medium, like novels, like movies. They’re a very new artistic medium. People tend to just look at games as some fun thing, which they usually are, to be honest. I really want to make a game that has a message, that can be considered some kind of art or expression. That’s the goal.

Do you think that after you graduate, you’d want to get involved in the gaming industry?

We’re probably going to publish this game on Steam, one of the most popular gaming platforms; it’s like Netflix for games. But unless this game is super cool and somehow becomes super popular, then probably not. I’ll keep it as a side interest my whole life, though.