Welcome to the website for Games and Electronic Entertainment at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This site contains information about several related academic initiatives and explorations across our campus, located primarily within the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences, but with partners in the College of Science, the College of Imaging Arts & Science, and the College of Liberal Arts (just to name a few). From here, you can find information about our degree programs (like the Masters of Science in Game Design & Development and the Bachelors of Science in Game Design & Development), our labs, our work, our students and our alumni. Games at RIT is a community effort in almost every sense - we invite you to see what we're up to, and, if interested, to join our ever expanding family.
RIT students in the GD&D undergraduate and graduate programs teamed up to make a custom "banjo game" in Professor Schwartz 'Alternative Controllers Seminar'. It was a great deal of fun, and it is now featured on BoingBoing, direct from our booth at GDC 2009! You can find out more about the banjo game, and see some pictures of President Destler playing it in the GD&D Lab in this article from University News.
It's that time of year again, the Game Design & Development program is gearing up for GDC 2009. This year will be a banner year with a large booth on the showfloor, several presentations, and an alumni event on Thursday, March 26th with a visit from RIT President Bill Destler! Needless to say we're looking forward to that. Also, we'll have several folks giving demos of new games all over the show, as well as several students, faculty, and staff in attendance. If you are at the conference, please stop by, we can't wait to meet you! Oh yeah, and the artwork just went live, so be sure to click on the thumbnail to the left if you want the desktop image for this year...
The Games for Learning Institute (G4LI) is a first-of-its-kind, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional gaming research alliance that will provide the fundamental scientific evidence to support games as learning tools for math and science subjects among middle school students. It is great example of how technology can play a role in changing how students learn and give teachers new tools to create dynamic and effective curriculum. The G4LI is funded by Microsoft Research. The G4LI is made up of members from a consortium of schools in the northeast region that are exploring games and their educational uses including: New York University, Columbia University, City University of New York, Dartmouth, Parsons, Polytechnic University @ NYU, RIT, and Teacher's College. Additional support is provided by Microsoft and others.
More information is available from Microsoft Research on their project page...
The Tiltfactor Lab (http://www.tiltfactor.org) and the collaborative Values at Play project (http://www.valuesatplay.org) are proud to announce the release of the new casual computer game, LAYOFF.
Developed by members of the Tiltfactor Lab and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Game Design and Development program, LAYOFF is an examination of the current financial scandal. In the game, players play from the side of management needing to cut jobs, and match types of workers in groups in order to lay the workers off and increase workforce efficiency. During the game play, players eliminating many workers in a row find financiers and bankers taking the place of working class jobs. The financiers in this game cannot face layoffs. Play the game at http://www.tiltfactor.org/layoff.
LAYOFF was designed using the Values At Play curriculum materials, which can be used to design activist games or simply novel games with unusual mechanics. The key to the project is a focus on human values in games. "The game has an unsettling feeling,” said Mary Flanagan, the developer of the game as the Director of the Tiltfactor Lab. "It is cute and fun to play, but when you realize how frightening the situation is, the game in fact functions as a very dark portent." One of the principal challenges during game development was addressing a social issue team members felt strongly about without being didactic. LAYOFF was designed by Tiltfactor and the initial art is by Grace Ching-Yun, Peng, with art and animation by Jennifer Jacobs. Music is by NYC composer Paul Orbell. The RIT team was supervised by Dr. Chris Egert and coded by Greg Kohl.
The Tiltfactor Laboratory is active internationally, and is based at Dartmouth College. Values at Play is a collaborative research project led by Dr. Mary Flanagan of Tiltfactor and Dr. Helen Nissenbaum of NYU.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that a student team in the Foundations of 2D Graphics Programming Course has used their project to win one of 10 slots in the Penny Arcade PAX10 Challenge! The PAX10 will feature their game alongside a number of independently developed commercial titles. This is a great honor for RIT, and we’re very excited to see the hard work and dedication of our students pay off through this victory! More information is available on the PAX10 challenge at http://www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/pax10.php. More information on the student team is available at both http://games.rit.edu/student_work/2d/ and their website that hosts the game at http://www.impulse-game.com. Please join me in congratulating our students for their hard work and excellent design!
The GD&D program has partnered with the RIT Center for Imaging Science over the past year to explore the use of game-related tools, technologies, and interfaces in the field of sensor-based intelligence analysis. Working closely with Dr. Schott, Mr. Michael Richardson (a distinguished researcher within the imaging science center), and Andrew Phelps (Director of the GD&D program), Mr. Colin Doody, a graduate student in the MS in Game Design & Development and the CEO of Darkwind Media, has been developing gaming technologies that help to expand this area. Additionally, we’ve partnered with the University of Buffalo and the group doing the Geowall project there for additional display capability and stereoscopic 3D.
Recently Dr. Schott, Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Doody presented a demonstration of our work to date at the 2008 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium in Boston, Massachusetts. It went extremely well, and serves as a great example of how games can make a difference in non-entertainment venues.
More information is available through the following links:
http://www.cis.rit.edu (the Center for Imaging Science at RIT)
http://games.rit.edu (the GD&D program at RIT)
http://www.igarss08.org/ (the IGARSS 2008 conference website)
http://www.darkwindmedia.com/ (Darkwind Media website)
Recently the GD&D program held the first ever Golisano Game Day, an event that celebrated the launch of our undergraduate program by hosting a gaming party in the atrium of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. We gave away a bunch of stuff, played some games, and most importantly had a good time. Click here to read about the event and see the photos!
Microsoft Invites the World to Create their own Xbox 360 Console Games for the First Time Ever
Over 10 esteemed universities to add XNA Game Studio Express and Xbox 360 game development into their curricula starting this fall
RIT Recognized Among Top 10 U.S. Gaming Colleges
Rankings by Global Gaming League based on institutions’ compatibility with video gaming
The Global Gaming League, a worldwide leader in organized competitive online and live video game tournaments and events, has named Rochester Institute of Technology among the Top 10 Gaming Colleges in the United States. RIT was ranked #3 based on a variety of factors related to compatibility with video gaming.
Recently two of our advisory board members at Microsoft were caught speaking about our programs:
“We are happy to be involved with the games program at RIT. The curriculum is well aligned with the skills we look for in new hires at Microsoft Game Studios and has already resulted in several great hires. They truly are preparing students for careers in the industry.” - Dave Luehmann, General Manager, Microsoft Games Studios
"As a result of Jessica Bayliss’s CY2005 MSR RFP win and Andy Phelps’s complimentary efforts– RIT has risen to high visibility within Microsoft Research (MSR) occluding other academic leaders with a great game/programming environment (MUPPETS), a well integrated game curriculum (RAPT) and a plethora of great CS hires for the game industry and beyond! With the CY2007 MSR RFP win, RIT again shows its leadership in delighting both industry and students." - John Nordlinger, External Relations & Programs, Microsoft Research
The GD&D group at RIT have partnered with the IGDA Global Game Jam folks to help cover the event and publicize the games created through this wonderful event. Prof. Stephen Jacobs has written up coverage of the event over at Gamasutra, and we will be showcasing GGJ content at our booth at the Game Developer's Conference 2009. Many thanks for the IGDA and Intel for partnering with us on these initiatives!
It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Game Design & Development programs have recently received a Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express Innovation Award for 2007. This award will provide matching funds for increased curriculum development, complimentary XNA Creator accounts for our faculty and students, and collaborative opportunities directly with the Microsoft XNA development team. This award is one of six that were awarded globally in 2007 through a world-wide competitive RFP process - we are very proud to have been selected as a place of excellence for our work in Game Design & Development!
I am happy to announce that our programs were featured by name and example in the Keynote Address for Microsoft GAMEFest 2007 by Christopher Satchell, General Manager for the Game Development Group at Microsoft. In addition to mentioning our program and discussing a bit of how we use their products, he gave a demo of the “Aliens” game produced by our students over the past few months. Many congrats to Chris Cascioli, Chris Baker, Peter Kuhn, Ada Tse, Ed Huyer, Colin Doody, and Heewa Beecham. Your work looked incredible on the big stage!
How Will We Preserve Virtual Worlds?
Project Collaborators: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, Stanford University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Linden Lab.
Interactive media are highly complex and at high risk for loss as technologies rapidly become obsolete. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction. Major activities will include developing basic standards for metadata and content representation and conducting a series of archiving case studies for early video games, electronic literature and Second Life, an interactive multiplayer game. Second Life content participants include Life to the Second Power, Democracy Island and the International Spaceflight Museum.
The Preserving Virtual Worlds project is funded by the Preserving Creative America initiative under the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) administered by the Library of Congress.
More information about the Preserving Virtual Worlds project is available at http://games.rit.edu/downloads/about_preserving_virtual_worlds.pdf
It gives me great pleasure to announce that the December issue of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine features a write-up on the Rocktropolis game designed, created, and implemented by students at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Rocktropolis is the work of Chris Cascioli, Chris Baker, and Ada Tse who are graduate students in the Masters in Game Design & Development program, as well as SE student Peter Kuhn who is pursuing a domain in Game Programming from the IT Department. Rocktropolis was originally created last year in Professor Phelps' 2D Graphics Programming course (501 / 735). It is built on top of XNA technology, and was the first XNA game produced at RIT, which helped us land the XNA Game Studio Express Innovation Award earlier this year from Microsoft. The game was unveiled at the Game Developer's Conference of 2007.
We are very pleased that Games for Windows chose to cover our title for several reasons: First, it is a world-wide publication available at Barnes & Nobles, Borders, Wegmans, and similar stores. Second, it is the December issue, which translates to a greatly increased readership with the coming Holiday season. Third, we did not place this ad - the game was found independently by their reporting staff, which means our website (games.rit.edu) is gaining traction (the website is mentioned in the article as well), And finally, and most importantly, it is great exposure for our students, our programs, and our Institute! Please join me in congratulating Chris, Chris, Ada, and Peter. Way to go! The article appears at the top of page 30.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that I will be presenting on a panel at the International Game Developer’s Association Education Day at the annual Game Developer’s Conference. The focus of the panel is on “case studies of successful games programs and curricula”, and I will be joined by representatives from USC and several other fine institutions. We were selected by Susan Gold, Education SIG Chair of the IGDA directly for participation, and are delighted to attend and present.
In addition, we will be hosting a booth at the conference during the Exhibition, and encourage everyone to stop by to meet our faculty, staff, and administration! See you there!
Recently the fine folks at Alienware decided to use us as a case-study featuring the way we configure our labs in support of the Game Design & Development programs. State-of-the-art laboratory facilities? Check. Cooler-than-cool ALX Alienware boxes? Check. Amazing facilities the likes of which are rivaled nowhere in academia? You know it. Read the entire case study by using the PDF link to the left.
Also of note are the images in the article, which feature views of the Entertainment Technology Laboraotory facility which supports the GD&D programs in GCCIS. Many thanks Alienware for all your help!
For questions regarding the academic coursework and degree programs that involve game design & development, requests should be made either to:
Prof. Dianne Bills
Graduate Program Coordinator
Information Technology Department
College of Computing & Information Sciences
Phone: 585-475-6179
Email: ITGradCoord -at- it.rit.edu
Prof. Al Biles
Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Information Technology Department
College of Computing & Information Sciences
Phone: 585-475-7453
Email: jab -at- it.rit.edu
You may also wish to contact:
Prof. Andrew Phelps
Director, Game Design & Development
Information Technology Department
College of Computing & Information Sciences
Email: amp -at- it.rit.edu
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