Advanced writing (150 words)

Imagine you had to design a video game which reflected your personality and your interests. Decide what type of game you would design. Make a complete explanation of the general idea of your game and give trustful recommendations for the target public.

I became an engineer because I am convinced that everything in this life is about priorities and optimization. We prioritize the events we want to attend during the week as well as we do with activities in a project. Likewise, we try to optimize our salary during the month in the same way as a budget is optimized in the creation of a product.

There in an optimization problem known as “The bag”. It consists on a bag which has a given capacity, for example 10, and a set of items with a given weight, for example 5, 7, 2 and 4. These variables, the capacity of the bag and the items, conform one instance of the problem. The goal is to find the combination of items that fit into the bag which maximizes the weight of the bag. In the given example it would be (7, 2). This is the model of game I would choose to design. Varying the capacity of the bag and the amount and the weight of the items, the complexity of the problem instance can go from very easy to very difficult.

This kind of problems, easy to define, difficult to solve, are quite easy to sell as entertainment to a wide public target. Finding the best platform (smartphones maybe?) together with a nice user interface will drive the game to a secure success.