One of our second year game development students, Patrick Mousel, has won yet another game design challenge from the Game Career Guide !

This is an important, highly visible industry competition, and is part of http://www.gamasutra.com, THE central website for the game industry. This work was executed in conjunction with the second year Focused Game Design course lead by Richard Coons.

Recently, a Game Design Challenge asked you to create a fantasy game for game development. Fantasy sports are one of the biggest games around, and what’s interesting is many people don’t consider them games or their players to be gamers.

The heart of fantasy sports lies in tying real-world performance of something (such as an athlete) to points. Players of fantasy sports have to gauge the real world in some way to win with their game, and that’s what the best entries did in response to this challenge.

There are multiple ways to tie real-world performance to a fantasy game in the game industry. One way is to draft actual developers, and they can be rated by history. For example, Shigeru Miyamoto could be rated 10 in game design, where as Manveer Heir may be ranked 1. To get at these ratings, we can consider factors such as titles shipped, years of experience, and quality of titles (based on Metacritic scores, for example), to name a few.

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Last night, many members of the Flashpoint Academy team were pleased to join nine other winners of this year’s 2008 Chicago Innovation Awards as well and many nominees in a crowd of close to 1000 supporters of innovation at a festive celebration and awards ceremony held at the Goodman Theatre. This was really an extraordinary event and wonderful recognition for our new College and an acknowledgement of all of the hard work that so many people here and so many others have expended over the last two years in order to bring about the successes we have had to date.

During the evening, we were able to spend time visiting with some of the other award winners and meeting a number of new prospective students and employers and then to watch a very entertaining presentation by the MCs, (Tom Kuczmarski and Dan Miller), introductory comments by various city VIPs including Michael Krause, and a humorous and thoughtful presentation by Barry Moltz. Of course, all of our incoming Flashpoint students were privileged just a few weeks ago to have Barry come and give a similar presentation exclusively for Flashpoint students at the College and then to spend a considerable amount of time with our students in Question and Answer sessions.

Congrats to Paula, Amy Rising, John Murray and all the other Flashpoint staff, students and faculty who worked so hard on this film.

The Festival showcases over 200 films in more than 10 different venues in Santa Fe and in choosing The Collector, the selection panel said

We have deemed your title among the cream of the crop, not only meeting the high standards to which we aspire but also representing the strongest quality of contemporary cinema worldwide.

Our film will compete for one or more of 14 different awards given at the Festival which are chosen by esteemed jurors. Many of these awards have specific sponsors who offer awards and prizes, including the Heineken Red Star Award and Wallflower Press Award to an Emerging Filmmaker.

The film or a trailer will be made available for additional exposure at eyesoda.com. Trailers may also be posted on isuma.tv for additional exposure.

AFTER A BUSY OPENING NIGHT FOR THE FILM FESTIVAL WHERE FLASHPOINT FILM CREWS JOINED NATIONAL MEDIA TEAMS ON THE RED CARPET AND THE STEP AND REPEAT LINE TO INTERVIEW STARS OF “THE BROTHERS BLOOM” INCLUDING DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON AND STAR RACHEL WEISZ, THE TEAMS DISPERSED TO COVER EVENTS THROUGHOUT THE FESTIVAL VILLAGE.

FLASHPOINT ACADEMY FILM CREWS WERE LITERALLY EVERYWHERE THAT ANYTHING IMPORTANT WAS HAPPENING THROUGHOUT THE WEEK AT THE FILM FESTIVAL AND THE ONLY CREWS ALLOWED EXCLUSIVE FILM ACCESS TO THE MOST INFORMATIVE AND INFLUENTIAL QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONS WITH ALL THE GREAT AND TALENTED DIRECTORS IN TOWN TO TALK ABOUT THEIR LATEST FILMS.

THE BUSY WEEK WRAPPED UP WITH A PANEL OF EXPERTS HELD AT FLASHPOINT ACADEMY ENTITLED: “MAKING IT IN THE MIDWEST”. NEXT UP – FLASHPOINT TEAMS WILL BE HANDLING THE RED CARPET FOR THE CLOSING AND AWARD SESSIONS AND THE SCREENING OF “GOOD” DIRECTED BY VINCENTE AMORIM.

Q & A SESSIONS

MIKE LEIGH – HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

GAVIN O’CONNOR – PRIDE AND GLORY

DANNY BOYLE – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

CHARLIE KAUFMAN – SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

DARREN ARONOFSKY – THE WRESTLER

Flashpoint Academy Hosts State of the Industry Panel for the IGDA with Key Industry Leaders

(ABOVE) Some of the panelists with Simeon Peebler, Chair of Flashpoint’s Game Development Program

Panel of Experts Included:

Matt Booty, Interim CEO of Midway Games
Andreja Djokovic, Founder of Babaroga
Eugene Jarvis, Founder of Raw Thrills
Tom Kim, Executive Producer for Gamasutra Podcast on GDC Radio
Scott Herrington, Lead Producer at WMS
Alex Seropian, Founder of Wideload Games

NEW MAIN BROADCAST, FILM AND PERFORMANCE STAGE AT THE MERCHANDISE MART