Events
Lecture Series
The Game Center offers a series of lectures which is open to the public and has hosted many prominent developers, scholars, and writers for standing room-only evenings. Our talks have generated articles on every major game-related website; the final lecture of the 2010/2011 season by Eric Wolpaw of Portal fame was written up by many, including Slate magazine. A full archive of audio and video recordings of past lecture series events can be found here
No Quarter Exhibition
Through our annual game exhibition we commission local independent designers to create games that explore the creative potential of public play in a gallery setting. Several of the games commissioned for No Quarter have gone on to tremendous success: Mark Essen’s Nidhogg won the prestigious Nuovo Award at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, and Robin Arnott’s Deep Sea took the Indiepub Intel Innovation award at South by Southwest.
Tournaments
As part of our commitment to expand the range of game studies the Game Center hosts competitive video game (e-sports) tournaments. In 2011 Spring Fighter, our annual Street Fighter tournament, was a spectacular 3-day event that combined a film screening, a lecture by the most prominent commentator in the sport, and a tournament that drew a crowd of over 200 participants and spectators and was streamed online live to over 100,000 viewers.
The Open Library
The Game Center’s Open Library offers NYU students access to over 750 classic and contemporary video games. The library’s selection of articles and journals and our curated “game of the week” series help to establish a scholarly context for this diverse collection. Click here to see our collection!
Film Series
The Center hosts a series of films about games and game culture that have drawn great crowds and generated lots of press, including articles in Edge and Joystiq. The series featured the public premiere of several new films.
Global Game Jam
Emphasizing our connection to the New York City game development community, the Center hosts the New York chapter of this international game-creation event. In 2011 we hosted one of the largest sites in the world – the largest in the US – with more than 100 participants.
In the Media
Our events have been featured in all of the most widely read publications on games, from Gamasutra, MTV Games, and Kotaku, to Edge, Joystiq, and Destructoid. Kill Screen magazine says the Game Center “marks an interesting turning point in game culture.” Our Twitter stream and Facebook page are must-follow sources of news and information for the New York City gaming scene. Throughout the year, the game center faculty members have published extensively, given talks at major conferences around the world, and been cited in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the New Yorker, and Wired Magazine.
Other Events
In addition to our serial events, the Game Center frequently offers new unique and exciting events. We host a site for the Global Game Jam, 48- hour game creation event, our summer Master Class invites students to learn directly from seminal developers, and the student games showcase invites anyone interested to play our student’s games.
