PlayStation Blacklight

“Fearless, Fast Experimentation — With A Big Payoff”

Project Title: PlayStation Blacklight
Team Members: Narajuna “Arjun” Varma, Steven Jones, Karthik Krishnamurthy, Chu-Hsuan Kuang, Ashwin Kumar, Jing Li, Jitesh Mulchandani
Faculty Advisor: Chris Klug

The Idea

In Fall 2012, Sony Computer Entertainment America was intrigued by what they’d heard about the ETC — particularly about the crash course in rapid prototyping that is Building Virtual Worlds (BVW). They not only wanted to learn more about the ETC’s process, but they also wanted to explore innovative, new ideas that they simply didn’t have time to experiment with back at their home studio in Foster City.

Enter team Playstation Blacklight. Sony tasked them with producing a series of fully functional prototypes for the PlayStation Mobile platform; they were allotted three weeks for each one, similar to the length of each round in BVW. Over the course of the semester, the team developed five — each one utilizing the platform’s capabilities in a unique way.

The Process

Each prototype responded to an assignment from the Sony team that challenged them to explore different aspects of gameplay, storytelling, and interaction.

Prototype 1: Tasked with designing a game around an interesting lead character, the team flipped narrative on its head with The Girl and the Pillow — making the avatar a sentient pillow side character in the world of the girl’s dream.

Prototype 2: Prompted to create an asynchronous pass-and-play game, the team built Thief & Cop, a turn-based stealth game where players took alternating roles as a museum thief or a patrolling guard.

Prototype 3: Asked to design a free-to-play game with monetization potential, the team developed All You Can Buy, a fast-paced, social game where players spent “dirty money” quickly and used or purchased “clean money” to unlock upgrades.

Prototype 4: When they were encouraged to focus on mood over mechanics, the team built Forever Creative: an atmospheric, post-apocalyptic narrative driven by music and emotion rather than gameplay.

Prototype 5: Sony asked them to revisit All You Can Buy, but this time incorporating pass-and-play. Refined with polished visuals, enhanced gameplay, and asynchronous multiplayer, the game became the team’s most complete build.

The Impact

Playstation Blacklight demonstrated how effective the ETC’s singular approach can be — even when applied at a well-known, extremely successful company like Sony. Demonstrating collaboration, imagination, and sheer speed, the team responded to simple prompts with innovative examples of new technology.

This is something that stood out to the Sony team, who, after the semester ended, offered six of the team members internships or full-time roles at the company. These recent graduates got the opportunity to develop a new studio within Playstation called Pixelopus, ultimately developing and releasing the PS4 game Entwined in 2014.

For both ETC and Sony, the project laid the groundwork for future collaborations, proving that tight constraints don’t limit creativity — they encourage it.