Middle-school gamers unite for club

By: Kelli Bamforth

Ben McCall/Sun Photo Eighth-grader Tamas Kapros, a founding member of the Indian Hills Middle School Gaming Club, hopes to get a computer game he created licensed for the X-Box 360 gaming console. His game is called ‘Battlescarred’ and is a first-person shooter game, Tamas said.

Students at Indian Hills Middle School, 6400 Mission Road, Prairie Village, had their game faces on as gaming club adviser Richard Grinage divided two brackets into head-to-head matches.

The mostly male pupils tried their luck at Project Gotham Racing 4 in hopes of becoming Indian Hills’ first gaming champion.

Eighth-grader Tamas Kapros spearheaded the effort to start the club after he and a group of friends began working on their own PC game, “Battlescarred.” The world Tamas created is a first-person shooter game that he hopes to one day get licensed for Xbox 360.

“I first started playing computer games when I was 8 years old,” Tamas said. “Battlescarred is a game I’ve been working on but it’s not finished yet. It’s cool because you’re in the point of view of play. Me and a group of friends are trying to get the game made by 2009 – if it turns out good enough we’ll try to buy the license for Xbox.”

Designing a game from scratch is an involved process, Tamas said, beginning with design and preproduction and ending with the input of three-dimensional models to create the game itself.

“I’m saving to get a good computer to help me work better,” Tamas said.

Tamas and his friends started the gaming club because they thought it would be a good after-school activity, Tamas said.

“It’s really fun,” he said. “It’s been going on two to three weeks right now. We’ve had some good turnout. I had a couple friends work on it with me. At first we set up my own Xbox and then Ian (Keiser) prepared the speech for the administration.”

The friends first pitched Halo 2, rated M for mature, but the school administration turned down their request.

“They said we couldn’t have any violence,” Tamas said. “We could only play games rated E for everyone, like racing, football and other sports games.”

The school later bought an Xbox 360 and four controllers.

“I’m assuming (the school) will continue the gaming club next year since they paid for everything already,” Tamas said. “It’s really great that the school funded it.”

Tamas said he hopes to turn his gaming interest into a career.

“I’m trying to learn programming skills and 3-D modeling,” he said. “I want to one day start my own game development company.”

Contact Kelli Bamforth at 385-6024 or kellibamforth@sunpublications.com.