Spend your summer with MassDiGI
Blog by Tim Loew, Executive Director, MassDiGI
Are you studying game design, development, art, production, music, or programming etc? Entering your sophomore, junior or senior year at a regionally accredited college or university? Want to spend your summer working on games, learning a ton, getting paid, living for free, meeting new people and having a great time? Yes? Then, do we have something for you: The 2013 MassDiGI Summer Innovation Program! We call it SIP, for short.
Last summer, we received 55 eligible applications. Of the 55, 18 students ultimately were admitted representing 9 different colleges and universities including RPI, Springfield, WPI, Becker, Mt. Ida, Northeastern, Berklee, Champlain and Mt. Holyoke. In addition, student volunteers from Becker, Emerson and Binghamton are also involved. You can read all about last summer by clicking back through our blog or visiting the 2012 SIP Archive page.
Here are just a few comments from last year’s SIP’pers:
- “I learned an absurd amount of new things this summer.”
- “I MADE A GAME!”
- “Overall, I suspect the SIP is one of the best, if not the best, learning experience I’ll have at college.”
- “The mentors and the company visits were by far the best part of the program.”
This summer, we hope to admit up to 24 students and accomplish even more! For all the details and a link to the 2013 application, please click here.
When applying, please keep in mind that this is a competitive process. Only the best mix of students with the right skills and talents will be accepted.
SIP has everything you need as a student to kick-start your game development career:
- A chance to work on a game prototype from the ground up
- Work with a team of students to help create the “next big thing”
- Industry mentors to help guide you
- A free place to live and a stipend
This is not just another internship, but a chance to hold the fate of a game in your hands. There are mentors and faculty to help you, but in the end it is up to your team to build a successful game.
The 2013 SIP application period opens February 1, 2013 and closes April 5, 2013. Successful applicants will be informed by April 15, 2013. The 2013 SIP runs from May 21, 2013 to August 9, 2013.
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A game developed by UMass Medical School, the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute and Becker College was voted Best in Show at the Serious Games and Virtual Environments Showcase at the 2013 SSIH International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare in Orlando, Fla.
For the complete story from the Boston Globe, please click here and from UMMS, please click here.
Links to other related stories: Serious Games Market, Clinical Playground, Game Politics, Becker College, Worcester Telegram – Business Briefs, Worcester Telegram – College Town and Worcester Magazine.
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“The game development community here in Massachusetts has really taken off in recent years, with new studios popping up everywhere. I’m fortunate enough to be the co-founder The Tap Lab, and I wanted to share what daily life was like in the industry.” Read the full story on the MassDiGI Blog on The Hive at Boston.com here.
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How do you inspire a new generation of Capitol Hill dealmakers while educating youth about the political process? Through video games, of course. Chris Parsons of Muzzy Lane Software explains how they took a tough subject and made it engaging. The full post can be found here on The Hive at Boston.com and comes courtesy of MassDiGI.
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The 2012 MassDiGI Game Challenge was voted one of top 12 events of 2012 at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center. Read the complete story here. For information on the 2013 MassDiGI Game Challenge, please click here.
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Here’s one way a video game company can get gamers to try a new release: Make it free.
A number of game studios, including several based in Massachusetts, have embraced the free-to-play model for new game products. That includes some of the big boys. According to a Bloomberg News report early this fall, giant video game maker “Electronic Arts Inc., whose ‘Command & Conquer’ is ranked by researcher NPD among the top-five best-selling PC franchises of all time with more than 30 million copies sold since 1995, will make the game free online next year.”
Read the full story by MassDiGI’s Monty Sharma by clicking here.
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There’s a new opportunity for those dreaming of creating the next Call of Duty or Angry Birds: The MassDiGI Game Challenge invites high school, college, and indie developers to participate in a weekend competition. For more information and to register, please click here.
Thank you to our 2013 Game Challenge sponsors – Microsoft NERD, GSN, Overdriver.com, Muzzy Lane Software, Roadhouse Interactive, Becker College, PAX East, Mass. Tech. Collaborative’s Innovation Institute, Adyen, Greenberg Traurig, Stomp Games, Adobe, Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton, and Turbine!
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There’s a new opportunity for those dreaming of creating the next Call of Duty or Angry Birds: The second annual MassDiGI Game Challenge invites high school, college, and indie developers to participate in a weekend competition. Click here to read the full story from The Hive at Boston.com or here to read MassDiGI’s press release.
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What does it take to turn the bleak, epic world of Game of Thrones into a social Facebook game? A willingness to embrace the fantasy world’s most anti-social elements: Greed, betrayal, and maybe just a bit of old fashioned war. In this guest post,Jon Radoff, chief executive and founder of Cambridge game studio Disruptor Beam, talks about how his team is working with George R. R. Martin to make the world come to life.—M.M.
Click here to read the complete post on The Hive at Boston.com
This post, the first of its kind, comes courtesy of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI), a statewide center housed at Becker College and aimed at promoting economic development within the Massachusetts video and digital games industry.
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Would you like to write a blog?
Blog by Tim Loew, Executive Director, MassDiGI
MassDiGI is proud to announce an exciting collaboration with the Boston Globe and Boston.com on the establishment of a regional game industry blog for The Hive. In order to support this effort, MassDiGI has committed to organizing gratis, crowdsourced content from local game ecosystem authors, curating and editing the submissions and feeding them to The Hive for posting.
Over the next several weeks, MassDiGI will be gathering a handful of posts, testing and producing guidelines/FAQs for prospective authors. The goal is to have a steady flow of cool content organized for an official launch by mid-January 2013.
The first test post, published today, “Making a game of “Game of Thrones””, by Disruptor Beam CEO Jon Radoff can be viewed here.
This is great opportunity for everyone from studios and campuses across the region to let the world know about the amazing work and research being done right here in Massachusetts. If you have an interest in writing a blog, please contact me (timothy.loew(at)massdigi.org) for more information.
12/19/12 Update – Blog submission guidelines can be found here.
1/18/13 Update – Other test posts to date include: “The big payoff when video games are free” by MassDiGI’s Monty Sharma; “I was a teenage congressman” by Muzzy Lane’s Chris Parsons and “With a little help from my friends: a day in the life of a game developer” by The Tap Lab’s Dave Bisceglia.
2/8/13 Update – The State of Play blog is live and can be found here.
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