‘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.

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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.  

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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.

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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

Volunteers needed for voice actor casting session

We have close to 100 Chicago actors with professional credits and experience who’ve applied for our Voice Actor Casting Session this Friday. These actors will be auditioning for voice parts for the senior capstone games and animation capstone projects. We could use some help during the session on Friday, April 3, mostly helping to greet the actors and to keep things organized.

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March 29, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: Events

Congrats to Jeremy Mayes and Tom Rassweiler!

Winners of the 2009 GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Game Design Challenge!

The contest finalists, along with Eugene Jarvis and Alex Seropian

The winner of the top prize (a PS3) in our 2009 GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Game Design Challenge was the design team of Jeremy Mayes and Tom Rassweiler of Arkadium, Inc., for their game idea, “Market Limbo: How Low Can You Go?”

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March 28, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News, Events

GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Design Challenge

Meet Eugene Jarvis and Alex Seropian, win a PS3!

Read about the winning entry

Game development legends Eugene Jarvis and Alexander Seropian will judge the GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Design Challenge at DePaul University’s booth during the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Finalists will have a chance to meet one-on-one with Jarvis and Seropian to make their pitch and win prizes, and the designer of the best, most original game design will win a Playstation 3 game console. The GameDev.DePaul.edu GDC Design Challenge theme will be announced at the beginning of GDC on Wednesday, March 25th. Judging will take place between 1pm and 4pm on Thursday, March 26th at booth #6509 in the North Exhibit Hall, with the grand prize announced at 4:30pm. You can visit GameDev.DePaul.edu, the website of the DePaul Game Development program, for more details and updates.

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March 17, 2009 | Author: Scott | Filed under: News, Events

DePaul Game Dev Headlines

• ‘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
  
• Game Designer in Residence Lecture
  
• Wall St. Journal Interviews GAM Student
  
• IGDA Meeting: Stranglehold