Students, particularly juniors and seniors, are welcome to join us or a day of portfolio review (and mock interviews) with game industry professionals. This free event is organized by the students in Becker IGDA.
SIP15 roster chosen
By Tim Loew, executive director, MassDiGI
Year after year applications to our annual Summer Innovation Program (SIP) have grown in terms of quality, quantity, geographic reach and diversity. This year we received applications from 214 undergraduate and graduate students representing 55 colleges and universities from across the world – making it by far our most competitive year ever.
Choosing only 24 was a challenge. After much discussion, the committee selected a talented group. This year’s SIP teams will be made up of interns from 15 institutions including Becker College, Berklee College of Music, Brandeis University, Champlain College, Hampshire College, IUPUI, MIT, Northeastern University, RPI, RISD, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, University of Southern Maine, WPI – and our first international institution, Letterkenny Institute of Technology in Ireland.
SIP begins on May 19 and concludes on August 7. Over those 11 weeks or so, with guidance from professional staff and industry mentors, SIP teams will be responsible for all the work necessary to successfully launch their games. There is no internship program like it in the country.
As in previous years, SIP students will receive housing courtesy of Becker College as well as a modest stipend. Most importantly they will all receive the greatest game development experience of their lives. Yes, it may be a lot of work – but it’s also a ton of fun. We can’t wait to get going.
Updated 4/16/15
Ready, set, go! MassDiGI and HackerRank announce CodeSprint
By Tim Loew, executive director, MassDiGI
Are you the best game coder in the world? Prove it by competing in our MassDiGI CodeSprint challenge. The challenge, conducted in partnership with HackerRank, gives competing students the chance to test their programming mettle with the winners taking home some great prizes like $250, a Nvidia Shield Portable or a 3-day 2015 PAX East badge. Click here to enter. The online competition starts today and closes on March 3 – with the final bot competition presented at the Pre-PAX East Made in MA Party on March 5.
HackerRank is a site for hackers from all over to solve programming problems in different computer science domains like algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and to excel in different programming paradigms like functional programming. It is the planet’s fastest growing developer platform and it is on a mission to make the world fast by making hackers the best at what they do.
Companies like Riot and Pocket Gems use HackerRank as part of their recruiting process – so competing students just might find they get a call after this CodeSprint is over! Good luck to all.
Link: https://www.hackerrank.com/massdigi-codesprint
The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) is pleased to announce that Wooplex, a Worcester-based independent game studio, has won the overall Grand Prize as well as Indie Beta/Near Release Category honors in the fourth annual MassDiGI Game Challenge with the game Wooplex. Wooplex is a game based on a beloved Ukrainian cartoon character “Kapitoshka” in which players are challenged to help the main character, Wooplex, and his friends save his world after all of the light was stolen away.
Wooplex is being developed by Oles Terletskyy, a Lviv, Ukraine native, WPI graduate student and Fulbright Fellow, Ostap Hrytsyshyn, a student at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and Terletskyy’s father Ihor Terletskyy, an artist.
Grand Prize Winner Oles Terletskyy and Monty Sharma
“Winning the MassDiGI Game Challenge means more to us than you can imagine. The experience, especially the mentoring, was amazing,” said Terletskyy.
The MassDiGI Game Challenge helps indie, start-up and student game development entrepreneurs hone their ideas and products for launch. This year over 30 teams consisting of indie game developers and students from around the United States competed in front of a full-house on February 6 and 7 at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Kendall Square, Cambridge.
The annual event is a key showcase for the growing video game development cluster in the region. A cadre of game industry veterans served as speakers, mentors and judges during the pitch competition.
As the Grand Prize Winner and a Category winner, Wooplex receives $2,250, a legal services package from Greenberg Traurig, customized mentoring and public relations/marketing packages, a slot at MassDiGI’s PAX East demo table and computer hardware.
Playtesting Black Hat Oculus
The People’s Choice Award winner as well as Runner-up in the Indie Beta/Near Release Category was Boston-based Team Future with Black Hat Oculus. A two-player cooperative stealth virtual reality game played in the Oculus Rift or on a computer, where you can sneak past agents, avoid traps, discover secrets or use hacking s skills to disable enemies, unlock doors and more.
“This year’s competition was the closest ever,” said Monty Sharma, managing director of MassDiGI, “We were blown away by the teams, the talent and the creativity.”
Other top Indie Category winners include Medford-based Mob Made Games for Descendants which won top honors in the Demo/Alpha Category. Descendants is a fast paced, tactical hybrid game set in space where each match leaves lasting changes that impact future play-throughs.
Pitching Paper Pests
The Serious Game Alpha/Concept Category winning award went to Studio REKS for The Ecokids and the Paper Pests, a game designed by WPI undergraduates to teach the basics of biodiversity in which players are challenged to strategically preserve as much of an ecosystem’s biodiversity as possible after an invasive species is set loose.
Serious Game Beta/Near Release Category honors went to Cambridge-based Skylight Games for Lyrical: Learn Language with Music. Lyrical is designed to train your ear to recognize a range of pronunciations, remember the meanings of words through the stories of the songs and unconsciously internalize word order through addictive repetition.
Play Nimbus, a student start-up from Becker College, won the College Demo/Alpha Category for Private Eyes, a murder mystery party game where you and your friends try to find the culprit among them. Play Nimbus won a Category in the 2013 Game Challenge for Wobbles, a free game now available on the App Store and Play Store.
Maximum Crash, also from Becker, won the College Beta/Near Release Category with Starlot Derby, an action mobile/web-based app where the player battles an alien species known as “Starmen” in a game of baseball where levels change and pull in elements of classic arcade titles.
Winning the High School Category was Dante Hin-Gasco from La Scuola D’Italia Guglielmo Marconi in New York City with Math for Honor.
“The quality of game design coming up from the high school level is astounding,” added Sharma. “These competitors across high school, college and indie levels are setting a very high bar in making, not only technically sound games, but also novel methods of game play that will soon blaze new trails in the industry.”
Other Category Runner-up honors went to:
Honorable Mentions were given to:
The 2015 MassDiGI Game Challenge was made possible through sponsorship and support from Microsoft, Greenberg Traurig, Disruptor Beam, RockStar New England, Proletariat Inc., Thumbspire, MassTech’s Innovation Institute, Becker College, Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, BlueSnap, Nvidia, Vicarious Visions, Vivox and the ESA Foundation.
Update – Read full results announcement here on Gamasutra. Read the story here on VR World and here at the Daily Herd.
Update – Winners announced:
Update – Finalists announced:
Stay tuned for more detailed posts soon.
* Category winner
Think summer: 2015 SIP application period opens
By Timothy Loew, executive director, MassDiGI
SIP ’14 – Team picture
There may be 33.5″ of snow on the ground as I write but it is never to early to think about our annual Summer Innovation Program. Since the program began in 2012, of 296 total applications, 61 students from 16 different colleges and universities have earned a spot to spend their summer making games with us.
This past year, the 22 accepted students came from Becker College, Berklee College of Music, Hampshire College, MIT, Mt. Holyoke College, Northeastern University, RISD, Smith College, Tufts University, UMass Lowell and WPI. Working on teams – in just a little over 11 weeks – they produced four great games, all of which will be available to play soon, with two being published by Thumbspire. To get a sense of their games and the process, scroll back through some of last summer’s blog entries.
There is no other internship program like SIP in the world. Accepted students will have a game development experience they will never forget. Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? Details on the program, as well as the application, can be found here. The deadline for applications is March 20, so apply today!
Drop by our booth (#4248) at PAX East 2015 and say hello! This year we will have game demos from Wooplex, Black Hat Oculus, Cat Tsunami, Midnight Terrors and more! And, as always, we will be offering drop-in mentoring and running the Made in MA QR Quest!
You’re also welcome to join us at our panel: “Game Devs: The Next Generation, Part Two” on Saturday, March 7th at 1:00pm in the Bobcat Theatre. This panel features students from MIT, Becker College, WPI, RISD and Berklee College of Music talking about their experiences making games in our Summer Innovation Program.
Party time!
Join us for the best party of the year on March 5 in Cambridge! Click here to RSVP!
Download the program here!
March 5, 2015, 6-9pm
Event Sponsors: Microsoft and Turbine
Gold Sponsor: Disruptor Beam
Silver Sponsors: Funkitron and Becker College
Bronze Sponsors: GSN Games and BlueSnap
Featured Community Partner: Extra Life Boston Guild
Community Partners: Boston Post Mortem/IGDA, MassTLC, Boston Fesitval of Indie Games, Women in Games Boston, MIT Enterprise Forum Games Circle, MassTech, Boston Indies, Boston Unity Group, Playcrafting Boston, IGC, Pioneer Valley Game Developers, Worcester Game Pile, Lowell Independent Game Development Meetup, Purple Monkey Game Jam, HackerRank, IGDA NH and Game Makers Guild!
Presented by MassDiGI
Main Showcase: Disruptor Beam, Funkitron, Becker College, GSN Games and BlueSnap!
Indie Showcase: The Molasses Flood, Skymap Games, Part12 Studios, Skreens TV, Black Hat Oculus, Glass Knuckle Games, Asinine Games, TestTubeGames, Wooplex, Mob Made Games, Urban Electronics, Nasty Dragon Games, Idle Action Studios, Worcester Game Pile, Pioneer Valley Game Developers, Ysbryd Games, Obey and Half Glass Games
College Showcase: The EcoKids and the Paper Pests (WPI), Midnight Terrors (Becker), Xeero (WPI), Champoline (Fitchburg St.), Drifter (NEIT), Legend of Ora (Fitchburg St.), Sticky Tongue (Becker), Authentic Octopus (Wentworth), Pole Control (Becker), Hikari Michi – Light Road (WPI), Prism Wars (NEIT) and Eye Bot (Fitchburg St.)
We will be at GDC from March 2-5. If you wish to schedule a meeting, please drop us a line. In addition, we are hosting our annual Made in MA at GDC Party on March 3. Details below.
Made in MA at GDC Party
Please join us for drinks and snacks before another long night of work. Great chance to catch up with old friends and to make new ones. RSVP required. Contact us for a promo code.
Sponsored by Vivox, BlueSnap, HappyGiant & Pileated Pictures
Join us for our 4th annual Game Challenge at Microsoft New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge! More information on the competition including registration details here.
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