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Panda game stars at busy Techxpo
Saturday, September 15, 2012 • Kristine Walsh
THEY have not yet got the nod but a couple of teenage entrepreneurs are confident that, come November, the game they have designed will be on the international market.

Lytton High School students Raymond Geuze and Joel Beattie have spent nearly five months developing their on-line game Panda Pursuit and say it is near completion.

But even at this stage, the teens playing on it at Gisborne’s inaugural Techxpo this week reckoned it was going to be a hit.

“I’d buy it,” enthused one, who said racing the animated panda and jumping it over rocks in pursuit of a hapless turkey had been a lot of fun.

He should soon get the chance. The pair of Year 12 game developers say they have just a few tweaks to do until they can send their creation to Apple’s iTunes on-line store, where the game will sell for $1.29 a pop.

They are aiming for a November 1 launch and given the game is squeaky clean — no potty-mouthed pandas for them — they don’t anticipate any problems in getting it through Apple’s criteria.

Their “marketing team” has been doing solid groundwork for the launch; Raymond and Joel’s schoolmate Ashleigh Watson dressed up in a panda suit and made panda cupcakes for Thursday’s Techxpo demonstration.

Spread over three spaces at Te Wananga o Aotearoa’s Gisborne campus, the showcase of information technology was pulled together by Tairawhiti Computer Hubs Trust, the legal arm of the Gizzy Geeks networking group.

It all started with Geeks Trust member Maurice Alford’s observation that the number of young people studying IT in Gisborne was declining.

“This was exactly what we wanted to see happen,” said Mr Alford — a teacher and ICT co-ordinator at Lytton High School — gesturing around at the hive of activity at the inaugural event.

Since early in the day, a steady stream of students from the Gisborne/East Coast region had streamed through the Techxpo to hear speakers, to watch demonstrations in everything from programming to robotics, and to get some hands-on tuition.

It was not just about plotting career moves for the distant future, Mr Alford said.

A survey of teen students had shown that two-thirds of them wanted part-time work during their school years and, he said, tapping into technology could be an option.

Neither did age have to be a barrier. Year 10 Campion College student Ben Naden had spent the entire day at the Techxpo where he demonstrated flash animation, often to visitors a lot older than himself.

“In terms of the level of engagement and helping students realise that there are valid career pathways in IT, the Techxpo has surpassed what we ever imagined,” Mr Alford said.

“It has just been huge, so we’re definitely going to do it all again next year.”
PANDA PROGRAMMING: Lytton High School students Rayne Lidgard (seated left) and Meke Brown (seated right) leapt at the opportunity to test Panda Pursuit, the game developed by schoolmates Raymond Geuze (standing left) and Joel Beattie (standing right), who were supported by their one-woman marketing team Ashleigh Watson. Picture by Paul Rickard
ROBO-STYLE: While a video featuring former Gisborne man Stephen Roderick’s work on robotics projects for NASA was part of this week’s Techxpo event, local software developer Remo Williams (Codeshack) was on-site to deliver the real thing — albeit without the NASA-sized budget — to visitors including Lytton High students (from left) Joshua Te Purei, Adam Gambrill, Corey Croker and Malcolm Marfell. Picture by Paul Rickard
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