The Philippine Online Chronicles

A team from the Philippines won the Game Design award at this year’s Imagine Cup, the annual competition sponsored and hosted by the Microsoft Corporation. This weeklong competition took place in Warsaw, Poland.

The Philippine team, called "By Implication," won with a game called Wildfire, which according to the Microsoft News Center is “about saving the world through social action and volunteerism.”

According to Geek Dad, “the most striking thing about Wildfire is the visual style. It’s sparse, clean, and with a splash of color only to highlight events or objectives in the game. Additionally, the game environment is procedurally generated offering plenty of replay capability.”

“This game also offered the most effective integration of the UN Millennium Development Goals as part of the core game play but in a way that is not lecturing,” it adds. “Information about each goal appears alongside the objective allowing you to explore more if you choose to.”

According to the team members, Wildfire was inspired by the way Filipinos banded together in response to last year’s Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) calamity.

The team includes Philip Cheang, Wilhansen Li, Rodrick Tan, Levi Tan-Ong and mentor Kenneth Yu. Although all the team members are alumni of Xavier School, they have since graduated from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University.

The Imagine Cup, which has been running since 2002, is a celebration of the use of technology to solve overarching global problems.

“We believe that technology can, will, and must make an impact on the biggest problems in the world,” said Microsoft general manager of education strategy Jon Perera. "A lot of people will see great challenges and say, ‘yeah, that’s a problem.’ We look at you as people who take action and say, ‘I can do something about that.’”