New Scholarship for Women Game Designers
The NYU Game Center created a new scholarship designed to support women who wish to pursue a graduate degree in game design. The Barlovento Scholarship for Women in Games is funded by the Barlovento Foundation;
The Barlovento Foundation grant will provide a full tuition scholarship for three MFA students over the next six years. The first recipient will be entering the fall semester of 2017. All female-identifying applicants to the MFA program will be automatically considered for the scholarship, which will be awarded based on a combination of merit and need.
More information on the Scholarship here.
First Artist in Residence
This semester merritt k joined us as the first-ever NYU Game Center Artist in Residence. Both in her own work, and through community-building projects like her book Videogames for Humans and her podcast Woodland Secrets, merritt brought a smart, insightful, critical perspective to a number of issues in and around the topic of games. During her residence, merritt worked on current projects in the Game Center space, worked with students to give feedback and critiques to their work, and gave a talk titled “Game Design Lessons from God, The Devil, and Baseball”.
Read more on the Game Center’s Artist in Residence program here.
The NYU Game Center Cabinets
Each week at the Game Center, Professor Bennett Foddy, Technical Coordinator Brendan Byrne, and a group of Game Design MFA’s curate games for our new collection of custom built and refurbished arcade cabinets. The weekly curation features commercial arcade games alongside new student work.
The cabinets are playable to anyone at NYU and to the public during Playtest Thursdays and during our many open to the public events.
You can read about what shows on the cabinets each week here on our blog.
Games & Public Policy Roundtable
The NYU Game Center welcomed New York State Senator Martin Golden and Assembly Member Joseph Lentol for a roundtable discussion on the continued growth of the game industry in New York. The event brought together nineteen leading voices in the game industry, academia, entrepreneurs and government to explore ways to collaborate and foster the game industry.
Read more on NY State’s efforts to help support the game industry in New York here.
Thank You to Our 2016 Event Sponsors
The NYU Game Center would like to extend a huge thank you to the sponsors of our 2016 events:
Avalanche Studios
Fresh Planet
Take-Two Interactive
Viacom NEXT
We Play Dots
There generous support makes our events possible, and allows us to keep developing new and free lectures, exhibitions, tournaments, and more.
Incubator Showcase
The 2016 NYU Game Center Incubator provided seven projects an opportunity to bring their experimental work to market. Thanks to the New York State Digital Gaming Hub grant, this year’s cohort included a non-digital game and developers from outside NYU, two firsts for the Incubator. After three intensive months, this impressive group of games debuted to hundreds of people at the Incubator Showcase on September 9th, 2016.
Read more about the games of the 2016 NYU Game Center Incubator here.
No Quarter
Each yeah, the Game Center commissions new work from upcoming independent artists and debuts their work in a group show called No Quarter. On October 28th, at the Starr Space Gallery in Bushwick, hundreds of people gathered to see original work from Brendon Chung, Holly Gramazio, Stephen Lawrence Clark, and Catt Small. Learn more about the current and and former No Quarter games and artists here.
PRACTICE 2016
PRACTICE: Game Design in Detail is an annual conference for professional game designers. Our goal is to create a context for high-level discourse among game designers of all types. PRACTICE brings together console developers, board game designers, breakdancer tournament organizers, and many others to discuss the details of our shared game design practice. The entire conference will be posted on our vimeo page in early January here.
BQEs & Betas
Throughout the past year, we’ve partnered with Brooklyn Brewery to create BQEs and Betas, a quarterly evening where Brooklyn Brewery premieres a new and experimental beer, and we pair it with a selection of work in progress games from our students, alumni, and Incubator developers.
BQEs and Betas happen on Friday’s every couple of months, and you can look-out for the next one on our events calendar here.
Fall Honors
Our students and faculty continue to be recognized by festivals and conferences all over the world for their outstanding work. Below is a partial list of places where our students have won awards and presented games:
Indiecade
Official Nominees: Beglitched by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) & Jenny Jiao Hsia (BFA ’16)
Keeping the Candles Lit by Shoshana Kessock (MFA ’14)
Digital Selects: Overdose by Jen Allaway (MFA ’17) & Jon Moormann (MFA ’16)
eSports Showcase: Epitaph by Wyatt Yeong, Kailin Zhu, Jon Moormann (MFA ’16)
Night Games Selects: Block Party by Matt Parker / Gigantic Mechanic (Faculty)
Table Games: Nosedive by Christopher Chung, Sean Heron, Tom Sarachan, Seth S. Scott, Missy Senteio, Sam Von Ehren, Burgess Voshell, Zijian “Zed” Zhou (MFA ’17)
Fantastic Arcade
Multibowl by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) and Bennett Foddy (Faculty)
Daily Motions by Jenny Jiao Hsia (BFA ’16)
XOXO Arcade
Multibowl by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) and Bennett Foddy (Faculty)
Beglitched by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) & Jenny Jiao Hsia (BFA ’16)
The Playcrafting 16 Bit Awards
Best Mobile Game: COGNITION by LunaFive (MFA ’16)
Best Style: Peter Panic by James Marion (MFA ’15)
Student, Alumni, & Faculty Game Releases
Beglitched by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) & Jenny Jiao Hsia (BFA ’16) – Out Now on Steam, itch.io, and the Humble Store
Soft Body by Zeke Virant (MFA ’14) – Out Now on PS4, Steam, and itch.io
COGNITION by Eric Teo, Emma Wang, Alexander Feigenbaum, Wen Shi, and Chris McGinnis (MFA ’16) – Out Now on iOS
Swap Sword by AP Thomson (MFA ’15) and Diego Garcia (MFA ’14) – Out Now on iOS
Peter Panic Act II by James Marion (MFA ’15) – Out now on iOS
BOTOLO by Ian Snyder (Incubator ’16) – Out Now on Steam
Epitaph by Wyatt Yeong, Kailin Zhu, and Jon Moormann (MFA ’16) – Vote Now on Steam Greenlight
Janky Bounce by Nolan Filter (MFA ’15) and Nathan Jones (Minor ’12) – Out Now on iOS and Android
Spin Cycle by Eric Teo and Emma Wang (MFA ’16) – Out Now on iOS
CMYK by Seth Scott (MFA ’17) – Out Now on iOS and Android
Alumni Accomplishments
Our alumni have been making a name for themselves in the game industry by publishing games, joining major game design studios, and leading games in new and exciting directions. Here’s some highlights from the fall:
Leandro Riberio (MFA ’15) is now working at Riot Games as an Associate Game Designer, after showing his thesis game Ninja Tag as a PAX 10 selection.
Jon Moormann (MFA ’16) is now also at Riot Games as an Associate Game Designer, and showed two games at IndieCade this year: Epitaph and Overdose.
James Marion (MFA ’15) recently accepted a position at Double Fine as an Associate Level Designer, and released the second act to his MFA Thesis game Peter Panic earlier this fall.
Angela Lee (MFA ’16) began working at Lumosity.
Winnie Song (MFA ’15) is now working at Ubisoft.
Sandra Honigman (BFA ’16) was recently hired at We Play Dots as a Junior Level Designer.
Alexander Feigenbaum (MFA ’16) is also working at MarcoPolo Learning as a game designer.
Josh Raab (MFA ’15) took a position at Big Huge Games as an Associate Game Designer.
Marisa Saint Martin (MFA ’15) is working at Avalanche Studios as a Systems Designer.
Bruce Lan (MFA ’15) was hired by Zynga as a game designer.
Applications are still open for the MFA and BFA. Find more information about the programs and applications here.