Visit DePaul Game Dev at GDC 2010

March 9-13, 2010 in San Francisco

The DePaul Game Development program will be back again at the Game Developers Conference, the largest game industry and education event of the year, with a larger booth and more of just about everything. If you’d like to find out about our program you’ll be able to meet with faculty, industry advisor board members, students and alumni, and admissions staff. You can also play games created by DePaul students and meet the creators.

Come back for updates on more DePaul Game Dev GDC events as it approaches.

November 8, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News, Events

DePaul Student’s Virtual Boy Research Accepted for ACE 2009

CDM undergrad student Matt Zachara’s research paper on the Nintendo Virtual Boy console will be presented at the ACE 2009 conference to be held in Athens, Greece. ACE is a leading academic ACM conference whose focus is to gather researchers from academia and industry to stimulate discussion in the development and advancement of interactive art and entertainment applications.

Matt has spent the last year working with Professor Jose Zagal doing videogame research. Their paper, “Challenges for Success in Stereo Gaming: A Virtual Boy Case Study”, explores some of the challenges that must be overcome for mass-adoption of stereoscopic 3D videogame systems.
Nintendo’s Virtual Boy platform, originally released in 1995, was the first portable gaming console capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D images. It was a commercial failure. Matt’s research explores the reasons for this failure as means for examining and understanding the challenges that exciting upcoming technologies such as volumetric displays and 3D flat panel displays will have to address if they wish to succeed.

September 28, 2009 | Author: Jose | Filed under: News

DePaul Game Dev student wins Randy Pausch Scholarship

Congratulations to Sebastian Gosztyla on winning this prestigious award! Randy Pausch made a lasting impact on game education, and touched the lives of millions with his Last Lecture.

Sebastian Gosztyla knows about dreams; he was born in Bielsk-Biala, Poland. When he moved to the United States at 10, he learned how to play video games even though he didn’t speak English. Though Gosztyla was offered scholarships at other schools, he decided to study at DePaul University’s Game Development program. Despite the financial struggle; he chose to pursue his vision. “I feel extremely honored and thrilled to receive this award. Efforts such as the Randy Pausch Scholarship help to change the perception of education in video games from a silly day dream to a recognized degree. It’s a relief to know that there are people out there who support the dreams of students like myself,” says Gosztyla.

Read the full text of the Randy Pausch Scholarship announcement.

August 19, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News

‘Uncovering Successful Co-op Game Design Patterns’

Visiting Lecture by Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr

3:10pm Wednesday, June 3rd Room 222

Designing good co-op games is an important topic in today’s video game industry. When interviewing kids ages 8-12, we found that over 89% of the kids interviewed play games with their friends or family at home or at their friends’ home. Most new games, such as Left for Dead and Resident Evil 5, have an added a co-op component to their game play. While in the previous years, co-op game play was considered as a secondary game mechanic, now games are designed with co-op components from the very start of the design process.

Read more…

May 31, 2009 | Author: Jose | Filed under: News, Events

Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning

Patrick Curry contemplates Super Mario Bros.

Patrick Curry, Creative Director at Wideload Games and Game Design Lecturer in DePaul’s Game Dev program, is included in the new book Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning, a collection of essays on games by game developers, scholars, reviewers and bloggers. The book is available for free download or paper purchase. Patrick’s chapter examines Super Mario Bros., one of his super all-time favorite games. The book’s goal is to “help develop and define a literacy of games as well as a sense of their value as an experience.”

May 23, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News

Toon Doom Postmortem featured on Game Career Guide

Dan Loane’s postmortem essay about the development process of Toon Doom, a UT3 mod created in Patrick Curry’s Game Mod Workshop course, has been published on the Game Career Guide site. It’s a very thorough analysis of an excellent mod. The Toon Doom mod team also included Tony Perkins, Erik Spitzer, Irvin Chavira, Kevin Zuhn, Andrew Sallwasser, and Greg Kruse. Direct link to the article.

May 3, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News

Alex Seropian wants YOU on his team

Alex Seropian is the president of Wideload Games, founder of Halo developer Bungie Studios, and DePaul’s new Game Designer in Residence.  This summer and fall he’s leading a student game development project here at DePaul with the intention of creating a game from concept to completion that will enter the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase (and hopefully win) and be released commercially.  In addition to Alex, the team will also be mentored by Joe Linhoff (programming), Patrick Curry (design), Scott Roberts (art) and Bill Muehl (production).  The team will be comprised of 10-12 of the best game programmers, producers, designers, modelers and animators at DePaul.  Is that you?  You’ll need to commit to a 24 week production schedule from June through November, and be willing to work hard.  

Read more…

April 26, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News

DePaul welcomes Alex Seropian, Ed Keenan and Bill Muehl to our faculty

Alex Seropian discusses game development education and his objectives as Game Designer in Residence

Alex Seropian, creator of the enormously successful Halo computer game franchise, will become DePaul University’s second Game Designer in Residence this spring. He will join computer game industry executives Ed Keenan and Bill Muehl as new additions to the game development faculty of DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) expanding an already impressive roster of industry professionals working in the program.

Read more…

April 25, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: Videos, News

Development Opportunity

Student developer(s) wanted to build a digital version of a turn-based board game.  Web-based multi-player platform with possible extensions to mobile platforms (iPhone?) and beyond. Interest in AI implementation a plus. Terms negotiable. See www.pushfight.com for more about the game or contact Brett at bubbamaker@aol.com.

April 20, 2009 | Author: robin | Filed under: News

Warp Whistle

This isn’t exactly game development, but hey, it’s Mario! This short film was created by Matt Dominick, a student in the Digital Cinema program at DePaul’s School of Cinema & Interactive Media, in his Advanced 3D Compositing class. As of this writing it’s been viewed 280,000 times on Daily Motion and was written up on BoingBoing.net, which is very cool. Congrats to Matt!

April 8, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: Video

DePaul Game Dev Headlines

• Visit DePaul Game Dev at GDC 2010
  
• DePaul Student’s Virtual Boy Research Accepted for ACE 2009
  
• DePaul Game Dev student wins Randy Pausch Scholarship
  
• ‘Uncovering Successful Co-op Game Design Patterns’
  
• Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning
  
• Toon Doom Postmortem featured on Game Career Guide
  
• Alex Seropian wants YOU on his team
  
• DePaul welcomes Alex Seropian, Ed Keenan and Bill Muehl to our faculty
  
• Development Opportunity
  
• Warp Whistle
  
• Volunteers needed for voice actor casting session
  
• Congrats to Jeremy Mayes and Tom Rassweiler!
  
• GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Design Challenge
  
• Patrick Curry Talks About Game Development Education
  
• Intro to Zbrush Demo
  
• Global Game Jam This Weekend!!
  
• History in the Making
  
• Game Jam ‘08 Documentary
  
• Welcome José Zagal to the DePaul Game Dev Faculty
  
• Midway Senior Producer William Muehl Joins DePaul Game Dev Faculty