They came to play:  Lily Cheng (left) and Erin Reynolds are the GamePipe "Power Girls" (photo by Fred Zyda) Click on the image for more demo-day photos

The USC GamePipe Laboratory celebrated its second complete semester of game development degree courses on the May 9 at USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Tutor Hall, room 321. Students in courses on serious games, advanced game projects, and networked artificial intelligence  demonstrated live their developed games for an august panel of game industry executives.

(A complete list of the games demonstrated can be found at http://gamepipe.usc.edu/Projects.php)

 

Shown in the demonstrations were prototypes of both entertainment and serious games, including Erm's Migration, Dying, Corporashun, Origin, Cahokia, Tame Tom, Warmaster, the Last Battle, Incident Commander, Cloud, and the NSF-funded Immune Attack and Fish Quest games. The produced game prototypes are culmination efforts of students taking part in early versions of the new BS/MS in Computer Science (Game Development) degree programs that USC stands up in Fall of 2006.

The goal of the BS degree is to educate students capable of engineering next generation games immediately upon graduation. Students in this program receive a solid grounding in computer science in addition to the art and design required for functioning in the game industry. The goal of the MS degree is to graduate professionally educated students capable of engineering next generation games and their required technologies.

 

Student work in this program is directly observed by members of the game industry and leads to internships and industry jobs upon graduation. Industry attendees at this event included:

 

• Justin Jumani, Staffing Lead for Microsoft Game Studios/Xbox 
• Jonathan Geibel, Manager, Walt Disney Feature Animation
• Tara Turner, Manager, Technology, Walt Disney Feature Animation
• Cory Ondrejka, Linden Labs, CTO
• Brian Schneider, University Relations Manager, EA LA
• Lynda Brown, President, New Media BC
• Steve Seabolt, Senior VP, EA
• Kate Paneno, Head Recruiter, Activision
• Paul LeFevre, CTO, Midway Games
• Mark Griffin, Developer Relations Manager, Game Technology Group Microsoft
• Mark Subotnik, Developer Relations, Game Technology Group Microsoft
• Hans Lee, CTO of Emsense
• Doug Failor, Director of Game Development, JFCOM Games
• Richard Marks, Manager R&D, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Annie Lohr, Treyarch (Activision)
• Christian Busic, Treyarch (Activision)
• James Ferrans, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Motorola 

 

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Game Development degree program is the largest game engineering-focused program in the world.

The USC Game Development Educational Program is directed by Michael Zyda, the Director of the USC GamePipe Laboratory. The mission of the GamePipe Laboratory is interdisciplinary research, development and education on technologies and design for the future of interactive games and their application - from developing the supporting technologies for increasing the complexity and innovation in produced games, to developing serious and entertainment games for government and corporate sponsors.