The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute is pleased to announce that Little Worlds Interactive, a Boston-based independent educational game development studio, has won the overall Grand Prize as well as Serious Game Prototype category honors in the third annual MassDiGI Game Challenge for The Counting Kingdom. The Counting Kingdom is a game for kids aged seven and up that encourages players to practice their math skills in a playful and engaging way.
“We are so excited to be heading home with the Grand Prize and category honors,” said Jenna Hoffstein, founder of Little Worlds Interactive. “MassDiGI did an amazing job organizing the event and bringing so many great developers, mentors and speakers together. The feedback and experience I received during the Game Challenge was extremely valuable, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is making a game and wants it to succeed.”
This is the first time a serious or educational game has won the MassDiGI Game Challenge Grand Prize.
Other top Boston-area winners include Chris Chung for Catlateral Damage which won the People’s Choice award and Indie Entertainment Game Prototype category honors. Catlateral Damage is a fun, first-person cat simulator where the goal is to knock as many of your owner’s possessions onto the ground as possible.
Please click here to read the entire official press release about all the winners. Click here to read stories on Game Politics, BetaBoston (1), Gamasutra, BetaBoston (2), WBUR or Boston.com.
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Quick post. Winners!
3/10/14 update: Read the press release here.
Grand prize
People’s choice
College entertainment categories
– College concept
- Spaghetti Flavored Cake – String Theory – winner – (Becker College)
- Double Trouble – Duo – runner-up – (Becker College)
– College prototype
- 80HD Games – Bümbardia – winner – (Becker College)
- Mustachio Games – Red Survivor – runner-up – (Binghamton University and Northeastern University)
– Honorable mention
- Supergeneric – SunBots – (Champlain College)
- K^2 – Mythitarium – (Becker College)
- Subconscious Games – Synaptattack – (Becker College)
Indie entertainment categories
– Indie concept
– Indie prototype
College/indie serious categories
– Serious concept
– Serious prototype
- Little Worlds Interactive – The Counting Kingdom -winner
- PBn’ Games – Zeebi Zoo – runner-up
– Honorable mention
High school category
- Wasteland Trials – Millbury Memorial High School – winner
- Wonderful Nightmares – Newton South High School – runner-up
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Quick post noting Game Challenge finalists (and honorable mentions). Please forgive any spelling errors…
college entertainment
college concept
- spaghetti flavored cake – string theory
- double trouble – duo
college prototype
- 80hd – bumbardia
- mustachio – red survivor
honorable mention
- k^2
- subconscious
- super generic
indie entertainment
indie concept
- renfroe/stimpaq – virtuoso vengeance
indie prototype
- chris chung – catlateral damage
- golden hammer – big mountain snowboarding 2
- now and zen – big bat baseball
college/indie serious
serious concept
- spherical cow games – stickman
- giant otter – bread and roses
serious prototype
- little world interactive- counting kingdom
- pbn games – zeebi zoo
honorable mention
- gone – wpi
- sub altern – no pineapple left behind
high school
- wasteland trials – mmhs
- wonderful nightmares – nshs
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United we win: Lessons learned from collaboration and co-working around the world
When: April 23, 2014, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Becker College, 61 Sever St. Worcester, MA – Weller Academic Center, Lecture Hall 210.
Ichiro Lambe is founder and president of Dejobaan Games, LLC, a Boston-area indie game development studio. He has worked in the industry since 1993, co-founding Worlds Apart Productions (now Sony Online Entertainment Denver) in 1995 and Dejobaan Games (still Dejobaan Games) in 1999. He is graduate of WPI. This talk will be variation of his recent same-titled Steam DevDays presentation.
The Franklin M. Loew Lecture Series at Becker College is free and open to the community. This lecture is sponsored by MassDiGI. RSVP to lectures(at)becker.edu. Seating is limited.
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Visit us in our MassDiGI Made in MA: The State of Play booth #499! We will have drop-in mentoring for aspiring game developers of all ages, awesome game demos from Little Worlds Interactive, gameblyr, Moonshot Games, Catlateral Damage, area college and university students, special international friends in our Swiss Gaming Corner from swissnex Boston and more. Also, back by popular demand is the Made in MA Quest! Visit all the MA exhibitors, score a badge from each and win a prize!
BONUS – Start PAX East off with our awesome panel featuring area college students at 10:00am on April 11 in the Dragonfly Theatre!
Game Devs: The Next Generation
Games: The final frontier. These are the tales of five college students. Their continuing mission: to explore strange new titles, to seek out new genres and new platforms, to boldly go where no one has gone before. More details here.
DOUBLE BONUS – Join MassDiGI and our friends from BlueSnap for a fun, happy hour event at 6:00pm on April 11. Register here. Ping us for a code.
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The annual MassTLC PAX East Made in MA Party at the Microsoft NERD Center is one the great community events of the season. Students are free and for all others there is a nominal charge. Please register here. See you there!
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MassDiGI will be in San Francisco during GDC. Join us for our Made in MA reception on March 19. To register, click here. Email us for a code! Follow us on Twitter for all the latest.
Thank you to our sponsors BlueSnap and Vivox.
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SIP14 now accepting applications
By Tim Loew, executive director, MassDiGI
Looking for an internship? Well, you are in luck – again. MassDiGI is now accepting applications to our annual Summer Innovation Program. SIP is one of the largest game development internship programs in the region. Last year, of the 84 applicants from 24 different colleges and universities, 21 students from 9 were accepted. The students spent 11 weeks working on 5 great games.
The experience gives students a unique opportunity to build games with the support of professionals and mentors, live for free and earn a stipend. SIP also allows students a level of autonomy – and responsibility – that is hard to find anywhere else.
You can find more details about SIP here as well as the program application. Click here for information about SIP ’12 and SIP ’13. Students with additional questions are welcome to drop us a line. May the force be with you.
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Making our games better, making ourselves better
By Jake Farrago, senior, Becker College
With the next generation of video game consoles now officially this generation, and with PC gaming continually pushing the bleeding edge of technological abilities, we are nearing the end of many disparities that have plagued video games’ pursuit of real world mimicry. The uncanny valley will soon be crossed, artificial intelligences will cease behaving as bumbling toddlers, and digital worlds will begin teeming with immersive life. However, as we tick these boxes and diligently scale the various stages of the hierarchy, our concerns should now be turning to a new aspect of video games. An aspect, whose inevitable arrival will ask us as game designers to think in a way that many of us have only given fleeting moments of consideration to. In the act of creating digital realities, are we not simultaneously becoming gods of these realities in the process?
The assertion that those who create life become imbued with a sense of godliness should not be that which is scoffed at or ignored. Just because the historical legacy of human beings’ own struggle with the concept of a creator is one riddled with conflict, tension, and doubt, it would do a great disservice to allow such bias to prevent us from taking up the omnipotent reigns as we forge ahead on the path of breathing life into digital existences. In fact, it’s a moral imperative that we not deny our critical roles in the creation of life in video games. For, doing so, we’d leave unattended the responsibilities and tasks that are traditionally charged to those in positions of divinity. The most important of these responsibilities perhaps being that of providing purpose and meaning for each and every part of our creations.
Currently, video games only serve to satisfy the player, an individual from our reality who chooses to transport his consciousness into the digital realm in order to entertain themselves. Everything else in the video game, from the blade of grass to the reactive organism, is in the service of this singular endeavor. Which, shares some self indulgent parallels with the gods of old, such as those present in Greek mythology. As it goes, those deities pursued as much gratification through meddling in the worlds of their creations, as we currently do through interacting with the various video games at our disposal. However, this approach will need to be transformed in tandem with the evolution of technological complexities present in video games. One day it will no longer be acceptable to dabble in these digital worlds with little concern for the repercussions of one’s actions. If you destroy an artificial intelligence, a truly intelligent one, what happens to it? While the game code may simply say it ceases to exist in its current state, what happens to its intelligence, its spirit? As game designers, are we prepared to create beautiful digital landscapes and profound virtual beings whose only express purpose is to serve at the beck and call of any whim our players may have? Personally, I find the prospects of such a state of affairs just as displeasing as the archaic religions that preach a god who demands we serve his commandments blindly and without question. Though, then again, when faced with that analogy with the roles now reversed, perhaps we’ll finally be able to empathize with the pressures that face those in a position of omniscient power.
Essentially, this line of reasoning leads to many questions being raised. Far too many to be covered in any one sitting. But, what may be more important than considering the countless forms this issue will take, is how best to go about addressing them. And, since I have no doubt that there will be countless ideologies that will spring forth in effort to achieve this very goal, I suppose now’s as good a time as any to throw my humble hat into the ring for consideration: If we make an effort to study the very existence that we’re witness to in our own lives, through unblinkingly looking within and without, we may discover how to not only better our creations, but also how to better ourselves.
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Where do we start?
By Tim Loew, executive director, MassDiGI
Video games have never been more popular than they are today. More people are playing more games than ever before. As as result, it’s no surprise that making games is also more popular than ever particularly with young people.
To that extent, although our expertise is focused at the university-level, we often receive requests from parents and teachers asking “Where do we start?” – how to best direct their interested elementary, middle and high school students to a starting place.
In general, we try and point them to peers or at the myriad of existing resources on the Web. There are great options for beginner’s of all ages – from Scratch and Gamestar Mechanic to Game Salad and Game Maker to more advanced programs such as Code Academy. Sites of all sorts (like Reddit) offer informative tutorials and videos that provide valuable insight. There are even summer camps. In addition, organizations such as MIT’s Education Arcade, LGN, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, STEM Challenge, MinecraftEDU, AMD, IGDA and many others provide helpful information about games and K-12 education.
Of course, making games is tons of fun and can really help encourage and engage student interest in subject areas like algebra, calculus, physics, computer science, programming, art, music, design, writing, psychology, business and so much more.
Over the course of 2014, thanks to the ESA Foundation, we plan to take MassDiGI 101, a new program we are designing to help parents, teachers and high school students learn more about game making, on the road and visit communities across all the New England states. Keep an eye on this site or on our Twitter or Facebook feeds for information on when we’ll be in your neighborhood!
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