Dubsteppers, a team from UVU made you a video game

DubWars is a video game that combines arcade shooting with dubstep and electronica music and was launched by MURA Interactive, a team of alumni and students from Utah Valley University. Music and weapons are working together so that the weapons are shooting in the way that music is playing.

As the intensity of music changes, so does the weapon load out. In this way the players can enjoy intense fights combined with smoother points.

“Utah Valley University is all about engaged learning. I decided to take it one step further. Instead of working with the community or building a portfolio to go out and apply for jobs, I thought, why not create jobs?” said Joe Albrethsen, CEO of MURA Interactive and UVU alumni.

Albrethsen said the idea to make a video game to dubstep music was followed by hours of searching for the right experience.

He said that the UVU Business Resource Center was a great help with teaching how to point out the good ideas and exclude the ones that did not have much value in order to achieve potential growth.

“It was a combination of passion for entrepreneurship and opportunity for leveraging university resources to build a great company. Another key component was the introduction of the OUYA game console,” said Albrethsen. The OUYA is an easily modified gaming console that allows the user to also be a developer.

He added that their company was aiming to take the chance of coming out as a featured title for the OUYA game console promotion. On June 13, the game made it to Steam, a digital video game marketplace.

Since January 2013, when the business was created, it has gone through various changes and challenges. Albrethsen said that the journey has been a “wild ride;” the music licensing alone took almost nine months and throughout that process he was the only person working for the company.

The new development team is created and the company is aimed at success.

“Through perseverance and many hardships the project has evolved from a student project to a fully viable commercial one,” said Albrethsen.

This team of creative students developed their own business, which lets others get a job and lets the creators enjoy their developments. DubWars now continue to be downloaded and entertain gamers with fun shooting and rhythmical dubstep.