A love of video games as a child led S'pore student, 18, to win top award, paid trip to Apple HQ in America

SINGAPORE/CALIFORNIA (United States) — When she was aged eight or nine, Miss Jiang Tongyu loved playing video games with her brother. She aspired to creating her own game one day so that she could bring the joy she got from games to others.

Her passion for technology led her to learn about coding, and this year Miss Jiang, now 18, created a music game called Tambourine Story.

That game has propelled the Raffles Institution student to be one of 50 "distinguished winners" of Apple's Swift Student Challenge from around the world.

It earned her a fully paid trip to Apple Park in California in the United States, hosted by the technology giant's chief executive officer Tim Cook, whom she had met in April when he visited Singapore.  Back then, she showed Mr Cook her Tambourine Story game.

She also got to rub shoulders with other developers at the California event.

The international competition, launched in 2020 by Apple, is designed for students to showcase their coding skills and creativity by developing app playgrounds and earn real-world experience that they can take into their careers.

It is named after Apple's programming language Swift.

EXPRESSING EMOTIONS THROUGH GAMES

The event Miss Jiang attended on Monday (June 10) was Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California, an annual gathering where the company announces new software capabilities for its devices.

A total of 300 developers were "regular" winners at this year's event, along with the 50 "distinguished winners", an innovation this year.

Miss Jiang is one of five Singaporeans to receive an award for the Swift Student Challenge for this year, but the only one to clinch one in the distinguished winner category.

She was also one of the regular winners of the competition last year with a game dealing with mental health.

She said that her latest game, Tambourine Story, which took one of the "distinguished" awards this year, was inspired by her love for music, having played the piano and guitar.

Two years ago, she formed a band with her schoolmates and started to rehearse and play music together.

“There was something different about playing music together and everything coming together and sounding really good," she said.

"It feels like you're part of something special. So I wanted to create something to capture that feeling and called my game Tambourine Story.”

The story-based game follows a little girl’s journey of trying to join a band. Unlike other rhythm games that makes the player tap on the screen to play it, Tambourine Story requires the user to shake the iPad like a tambourine in order to play.

Miss Jiang thought of the idea late last year and worked on it for two months, she said.

“I just really love expressing emotions through games. I think it’s a really powerful medium.” 

‘FELT LIKE I COULD DO ANYTHING WITH TECHNOLOGY’

As a child, Miss Jiang spent a lot of time playing Minecraft and rhythm games, which also inspired Tambourine Story.

Since joining the infocomm club in secondary school in 2019, she had taken part in hackathons and coding competitions.

A year later, she entered Apple’s Swift Accelerator Programme, where secondary school students learn to develop a “Swift” application over the course of a year, and then publish it on the App Store.

After her group’s to-do list app was published, she felt that she “could do anything with technology” and wanted to do more projects using the Swift coding language.

This was when she decided to sign up for the Swift Student Challenge last year, where she created a game called City Night, focused on mental health. It clinched an award.

HOPES TO FIND A ‘MEANINGFUL’ CAREER

Miss Jiang, who is now taking Higher 2 computing classes at school, said that one-third of her class are girls and that “most of them are better than the boys in coding on average”.

Does the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) sector lack women?

Miss Jiang responded: “I feel like most people wouldn't outright say it. But sometimes you can feel it’s a little different.

“For example, when you go to a tech conference, the guys are talking. But I feel like there's definitely been a lot more recognition over the past few years.

“I've been to a few events such as Girls in Tech, specially organised for students. And I think it's really good that there are all these opportunities for girls to try out different tech without being judged.”

She added that society should not generalise that all girls and women do not like working in the Stem field.

While she acknowledged that pursuing a tech career can lead to a good living, she felt that it makes more sense to pursue a career that one finds meaningful.

Apart from considering a tech career, she is also looking at fields such as the arts.

“Most people would think that tech and arts are on the opposite side of the field. But... the intersection is really interesting to me. So I would love to explore more on new media, games and animation.”

Following her A-Level examination at the end of this year, Miss Jiang hopes to pursue tech or the arts at a university here or in the US.

She also hopes to keep developing Tambourine Story into a longer game that would one day be on the main Apple App Store.