Perhaps the most important skill Harvey Mudd College encouraged was teamwork, from the more formal Clinic teams to the quick help of a roommate. Maybe that's why we tend to clump together in Mudder puddles at home and at work.

I learned recently that my fellow Mudders and coworkers Gillian Allen and Nick Barratt had won a Microsoft programming contest. In a story that appeals to my affinity for romantic comedies, human-vs.-machine tales and teamwork, the programming pair used pair programming to develop their winning entry for the Silicon Minds Warm-up Challenge, part of Microsoft’s Dream Build Play 2008 contest. The goal was to design a game that used artificial intelligence (AI).

Their winning entry, called Conquerator, is described as a two-player strategy game “where each player controls nodes on a map. By defending your own nodes and attacking the nodes of the other player, your goal is to eliminate your opponent from the map. Battle one of three AI players.”

Starting with a favorite strategy game, Risk, Nick and Gillian stripped out their least favorite parts. With only three weeks’ worth of nights and weekends to develop their entry, the pair also chose a simple AI to create their own streamlined design.

“AI is a poor substitute for having a human opponent," Gillian explained, and told me how the point of most game AIs is to teach the player to overcome a certain challenge. But they built theirs a little differently.

“Ours plays to win," Gillian said with her mischievous Mona Lisa smile.

Of course there were bugs to shake out, and a lot of hard work.

“Then it started beating us,” she said about that one magical moment. Did they shout, “It’s alive!”? Knowing Gillian and Nick, there might have been a quick high-five before getting right back to work. They did do some celebrating after learning Conquerator was a winner.

When they returned from the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (their prizes included expo passes), Gillian told me how the display for the contest was right at the main entrance of the huge convention, “and our game was up on these big screens,” she said, still excited and amazed. Nick added, “It was really cool to see people playing our game and enjoying themselves.”

So what’s next for the fun-producing duo? I feared gaming companies would try to steal them away from the awesome privately held company where we all work (Opto 22, whose owners support Mudd in a number of generous ways). They reassured me that, “We’re only doing this as a hobby.”

With the limited time and resources they had for the contest, they couldn’t include niceties like complex graphics or the sound they’re working on now. In the meantime, their Wii, PlayStation 2, GameCube and XBox gather dust. I wonder what their owners will dream up for the next Dream Build Play contest.

To download Gillian and Nick’s game, visit www.dollarshortgames.com.