The NYU Game Center’s annual PRACTICE conference asks the question, “What is the practice of game design?”  We invite you to explore this question with us once again when PRACTICE 2013 returns on November 15th- 17th.

Out of all the disciplines needed to make a game, game design is the most critical but least understood. PRACTICE is a yearly conference for professional game designers that explores the ideas and methods of game design. PRACTICE brings veteran designers across computer and videogames, paper games and sports, over three days to take a close look at the nuts and bolts of game design. Through lectures and panels, workshops and discussion, we explore the practice of game design, with a focus on the concrete, day-to-day techniques of designing games, with plenty of time for playing and socializing as well!

Exclusive speakers you won’t see anywhere else, an intimate gathering of working designers for high level discussion, and lots of time for social events in NYC makes this conference is a true must-attend for anyone interested in game design.

Last year, conference goers created a collaborative record of the many threads and conversations brought up over the course of the conference.  We encourage you to browse through this amazing and entertaining record of PRACTICE 2012 and learn why PRACTICE is not to miss!

We also have video recordings of each of the lectures on our Vimeo page!  Each lecture is full of unique insight, we welcome you to enjoy and share them!

Tickets will be available in the late summer.  For updates on PRACTICE 2013, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or the official PRACTICE page.

Join us on Thursday May 16th at 7PM for the NYU Game Center Student Show!  The first class of NYU’s MFA program is completing its first year, and to celebrate, the students invite you to come play games developed in their first year of education.  The semester-long projects from Game Studio II will all be on display, as well as a collection of work from Game Design I & II, Minimalist Game Design, and Game Studio I.  A few select undergraduate projects will also be represented!  The games from Game Studio II will be:

• Float through space in Kaleidoscope, an existential space crisis homage to Ray Bradbury.
• Team up with others in the networked spaceship battle game Asterisk.
• Try and escape a sunken Roman wreckage in the undersea puzzle game Octavia. 
• Rediscover your childhood love of tabletop dungeon battles with the digital tribute Brutal Arena.
• Float through the trees and make the forest bloom with the Kinect game Jungle.
• Experience a trippy narrative experience on the tennis court with Text Tennis. 

Refreshments will be served. RSVP here and come join us!

Come join us for an end of the semester day of games at the NYU-Poly Game Innovation Lab in Brooklyn on May 8th! Celebrate the end of term from 3-10PM and play games made by students as well as developers from the extended New York game design community such as Kaho Abe and Howard Tsao.

The schedule for the day includes games to play in the lab and on the plaza (weather permitting) from 3PM-6PM, followed by an Indie Tech Talk at 7PM by Canabalt designer Adam Saltsman entitled “Humanist Game Design”, hosted by Andy Nealen. Afterwards, stay to enjoy more games into the night, including the alpha playtest of the outdoor platformer re-creation of Canabalt entitled Canasphalt, created by Come Out and Play.

No RSVP necessary. NYU-Poly Game Center is located at 5 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn.

Please join us in welcoming Harvey Smith for the conclusion of 2012-13 Guest Lecture Series on Thursday May 2nd at 7PM!

With a pedigree extending back to the famed Looking Glass Studios, Harvey Smith has been a designer of innovative and lauded games since the mid 90′s.  Most recently he was the Creative Director of Dishonored, one of this year’s most creatively ambitious and well-received games.  We welcome you to take part in a conversation with Harvey about how his team’s approach to player-centric and adaptive gameplay has made Dishonored such a success.

We encourage you to bring colleagues and friends, and to come with questions and participate in the conversation.  Free and open to the public.  RSVP required, register at this link.

Beginning on Monday in the Open Library, our student librarians will be curating games that are in conversation with Harvey’s work.  The games will be open for play throughout the week and before the lecture on Thursday, so we encourage you to arrive early and play.  The Open Library is open Monday – Friday 12PM – 8PM in the lower level of 721 Broadway.

The NYU Game Center is happy to announce the premiere of four new games from Bennett Foddy, Sophie Houlden, Matthew LoPresti, Nik Mikros, and Josh DeBonis at the fourth annual No Quarter Exhibition. This year the show will held on Friday, May 3rd at 7pm and located at the Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway on the 9th floor.

For the past several years the NYU Game Center has commissioned new work from established and emerging independent game developers, challenging them to create games for a social, gallery setting. Previous commissions have included games such as Mark Essen’s Nidhogg (IGF Nuovo Award Winner) and Robin Arnott’s Deep Sea (SXSW Propeller Award Winner), Margaret Robertson’s Drunk Dungeon, Terry Cavanagh’s At a Distance, Noah Sasso’s Barabariball, and Ramiro Corbetta’s Hokra, as well as others. This year’s No Quarter promises a new batch of exciting games that explore the design space of social and local play, with commissions from talented game creators from all over the world.

In addition to our games this year we have also partnered with the video game culture shop Attract Mode to commission five talented artists to create illustrations based on some of the most notable games that have come out of the Exhibition. Each of these pieces will be on display at the during the premiere of the show, and prints will be available for purchase, with all profits from these sales going directly to the illustrators. The motivation behind No Quarter has always been to give game designers a chance to create unique and evocative work, and we’re excited to include visual artists this year as well.

The Exhibition will be held on the 9th Floor of the Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway.  Light fare and refreshments will be provided, with drinks sponsored by the Brooklyn Brewery.

Free and open to the public.  Please RSVP here.

NYU Game Center Partners with Competitive Gaming Tournament to Offer a New Scholarship!

The EVO Scholarship will allow a member of the fighting game community to study game design at the prestigious NYU Game Center MFA program.

The NYU Game Center, a new department within the Tisch School of the Arts, is focused on game design as a creative practice. One of the most vibrant and innovative aspects of contemporary game design culture is the rise of high-level competitive gaming, sometimes known as e-Sports.  This past weekend at Spring Fighter, the Game Center announced a scholarship funded by EVO, the world’s largest fighting game tournament and a premier competitive gaming venue.

The EVO Scholarship will be awarded annually to an applicant who best demonstrates an active participation in the fighting game community, an interest in game design with a focus on innovating in the field of competitive games, and a legitimate financial need.

Much of the attention surrounding the rise of e-Sports is focused on the high-stakes world of pro- gaming, in which top players compete for cash prizes and lucrative sponsorship deals. But Tom Cannon, the founder of EVO, is interested in using the scholarship to highlight other qualities of the competitive gaming scene – the values of community, focus, discipline, and critical thinking. The goal of the scholarship, says Cannon, is to “showcase how a commitment to mastering a competitive game can be a key ingredient in a successful, well-rounded life.”

For the NYU Game Center, this scholarship is an opportunity to bring attention to the competitive gaming scene as an important and valuable domain for thinking about games and game design. According to Frank Lantz, Director of the Game Center, “Fighting games combine the strategic depth of Chess with the technical mastery of a physical sport, and understanding them is critical to understanding the future of games as a cultural form.”

The fighting game community is known for its ethnic and socio-cultural diversity and the EVO Scholarship is also an opportunity to provide a path into the game industry for underrepresented voices who can bring much needed new perspectives to the world of game design.

The amount of the EVO Scholarship will be determined by the money generated by the EVO Pay-per-view HD live stream, so the greater the online audience for the event, the larger the scholarship amount. Based on previous years the amount is estimated to be between $20,000 and $30,000.

For more information on the event go to http://evo.shoryuken.com/

Spring Fighter Success!

In addition to the EVO Scholarship, Spring Fighter was a huge success!  We filled the venue with tournaments running all day and into the night, heard an amazing conversation between Daigo Umehara and Seth Killian about Daigo’s life as a competitor, and some fighters even got the chance to go head to head with Daigo in front of the whole crowd and the online stream.

Mad Catz was there to film the whole event, and the talk is especially exciting for us to share.  Even for those not interested or literate in Street Fighter, Seth and Daigo’s conversation covered on topics familiar to all sports fans and game players.  A rare opportunity to hear from a high level competitor, and well worth the watch.

Check out the Mad Catz and Fight Your Rival channels for other great videos from the event including interviews with the players and organizers, footage from the tournament, and more.

Thanks to everyone who made this event possible, Mad Catz, Capcom, Daigo, Seth, Wyseguy, Team Spooky, and the entire fighting game community.

Take a Class at the NYU Game Center!

This summer the NYU Game Center is offering four of our best undergraduate courses to the game community.  Summer courses are open to anyone with a high school diploma or equivalent – you don’t need to be a current student.  These can be taken for credit to transfer to another undergraduate program, and noncredit options are available as well.  This is a great chance to experience what the Game Center has to offer.  Try your hand at designing your own digital and non-digital games, learn to play games with a critical eye and study with our talented faculty!

These six-week courses are offered in two sessions.  The first session is from May 28 – July 5, the second runs from July 8 – August 15.

Non-NYU students will have to apply for visiting student status.  The process is simple, and you can get started here: Apply Now

Check out the class schedule below.  For full course descriptions and tuition information please visit gamecenter.nyu.edu/summer

If you have any questions about registering or the classes below please email us at gamecenter@nyu.edu
Click to see more.

The Game Center Lecture Series Presents:

NYU President John Sexton

Thursday, April 18, 7PM
721 Broadway, Room 006

This event is free and open to the public.  RSVP required, please respond here.

We are excited to announce that NYU President John Sexton will be speaking with us on Thursday as part of our guest lecture series. He will be talking about his recent book “Baseball as a Road to God”.

At the NYU Game Center, we believe that the best way to understand contemporary video games is to place them within the larger context of games and play as a fundamental aspect of culture that stretches back to the dawn of history. As we seek to elucidate the different ways that games can engage with important issues and express complex ideas, it is critical to look at a game like Baseball and appreciate how it can become a profoundly meaningful part of people’s lives. Games can be more than simple pastime, more than disposable entertainment. This is exactly what Sexton’s work is about. We are thrilled to welcome him to the Game Center to discuss these challenging and important ideas. Please join us for this exciting conversation.

- Frank Lantz, Director NYU Game Center

Please save the date and register now for Different Games! Different Games is the first ever conference on diversity, difference and inclusivity in digital games, hosted April 26-27, 2013 at NYU’s Polytechnic Institute in downtown Brooklyn. Different Games is a space for radical discussions of representation in games and the relationship of the medium to designer and player identity.

Events at Different Games will involve panel discussions, hands on workshops, peer-to-peer breakout sessions and a game arcade. Keynotes include Mary Flanagan, ”Critical Play: Inclusive Design, Revolutionary Games” and Celia Pearce, “Kickstarting a Revolution, One Tweet at a Time.” Other presenters include Anna Anthropy, Mattie Brice, Robert Yang, Nick Fortungo, Adrienne Shaw, Raiford Guins, Kaho Abe, representatives of Babycastles and more! For our tentative schedule, please check our website.

Different Games is free to all presenters and attendees, but space is limited, so we do ask that you register via differentgames.eventbrite.com.

All questions should be directed to Different Games co-organizer, Laine.Nooney@gmail.com

We are now taking registrants for the fourth annual Spring Fighter Tournament!

This year we are hosting three tournaments around three games: Super Street Fighter IV AE, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom, and Tekken X Street Fighter. Each tournament only has 64 spots so act quickly if you’d like to participate.

To register for any or all of the three tournaments, or to RVSP for our evening event with Daigo and Seth Killian, please click the link below fill in your information:

Register 

Remember that you do not need to register for the tournament in order to attend the evening event!  Spring Fighter is entirely free and open to the public!  Thank you to our sponsors, Capcom and Mad Catz for making Spring Fighter possible.

Good luck!

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Event Schedule

10am – 12pm: Sign-in and Casual Play

12pm – 5pm: Pools for SSFIVAE, UMvC, SFxT (All games will be on Xbox 360)

5pm – 630pm: SFxT and UMvC Finals

7pm – 8pm: A Conversation with Daigo ‘The Beast’ Umehara by Seth ‘SKill’ Killian

8pm – 10pm: SSFIVAE Finals

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NYUGC Code of Conduct

The world of games and the people who love them is vibrant and diverse but there are aspects of traditional gamer and game development culture which can be homogenous and exclusionary. Problems of bias can range from a subtle but pervasive “boys club” mentality to explicit sexism or racism in game content to hostile or offensive language and behavior at gaming events.

It is important to us that the Game Center community be an inclusive, diverse, safe, and welcoming environment. Our policy regarding this is simple:

We have zero tolerance for any kind of offensive behavior or harassment.

If you aren’t sure about what constitutes appropriate behavior or language, simply ask yourself – will the person I’m talking to find it offensive? If so, don’t say it. You should always err on the side of courtesy and respect.

This is our policy for all members and guests of the Game Center community.