Undergraduates Present Projects on Game Development, Historical Research and more, During Recent Research Showcase

On April 14, WSUV hosted its 23rd annual research showcase event, wherein undergraduates and graduates alike could present posters and art projects demonstrating research from across a plethora of different majors whilst taking questions from guests. 

One project, Fireflies: Be the Light in Darkness, was a collaboration project amongst a team of over 20 people of varying disciplines. Fireflies is a 3D puzzle & stealth game about a small fictional creature called a “gnelle” who befriends fireflies.

In describing the production of the game, team member Quid Melton listed multiple teams at work on the project, including teams for game development, design, web development, social media and motion graphics.

“All of those different teams are gonna work together, so Motion Graphics is making our teaser trailer and our documentary . . . Web Development is making our homepage, you know, for the game. Design has created the typography and the logo and our brand guidelines as well as our concept art for what the game actually looks like, and the Game Development [team], well you know–they develop the game” Melton said. 

Meanwhile, the story for Fireflies was written by their partnership company, Noctua Interactive, and it was the job of the team to determine how they’d go about implementing those concepts into a game.

Another project presented at the showcase was Deal with Devils: Unit 731 and the United States Secret Pact in Biological Warfare. The student presenting the project, Lilly Lovelady, described the research as focused on the history and legacy of Unit 731, a covert program in the 1930s within the Imperial Japanese Army.

Lovelady’s research found that the United States–through Douglas MacArthur all the way up to President Truman– made a deal with Unit 731 for the data they had gathered through their experiments, which Lovelady added was found through “very inhumane means.” 

The project connected this to the Korean War, where allegations of biological warfare were directed at the US. Lovelady mentioned there were American pilot testimonies to back these allegations up, despite the US dismissing the allegations as “communist propaganda.”

She referenced Fort Detrick as a key site in US research efforts, saying “That’s the US fort for biological warfare established in 1941 during World War II . . . We had Shiro Ishii [the leader of Unit 731] working for us at Fort Detrick. He taught us about biological warfare.”

Reflecting on what she had learned through her research, Lovelady said she found it really important to question things in history so much, since “governments shape historical narratives.”

She concluded by adding that there is not much talk in Japan about Unit 731 or its contributions to biological warfare.

In reference to Japan’s national ceremony of recognizing World War II and their surrender, Lovelady said “It’s a day of silence. Silence. No one talks about the war, why they did it, what they did, or why it happened.”