ETC-Portugal student project WAYLA has been accepted into the Emerging Technology venue at this year's SIGGRAPH.
WAYLA is an original game that takes advantage of the unique properties of gaze-based interaction (reflexive saccade, for example) to achieve a gaming experience that is not available with traditional input devices. In most games, players need to continuously look at and switch among multiple targets and avoid distractors. As commercial eye-tracking technology become more affordable, it is becoming one of the emerging technologies of the near future. WAYLA is at the forefront of utilizing this new technology, and it will yield many valuable insights and lessons for the next generation of game development.
The team consist of ETC-Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute students: Wein Chang, Po-an Shen and Kushal Ponnam and Helena Barbosa from Madeira Interactive Technology Institute with faculty advisers Monchu Chen Carnegie Mellon University, Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute and Sergi Bermúdez Madeira Interactive Technology Institute.
The Emerging Technologies program at this year's SIGGRAPH will present innovative technologies and applications in several fields, from displays and input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, and technologies that apply to film and game production. For those of you going to SIGGRAPH in July, make sure to stop by and check out the ETC project.
Congratulations and best of luck to the WAYLA team!
A few weeks back we learned that ETC student Brad Buchanan was awarded an EA scholarship. We recently found out that ETC alum Animish Gadve had also won the scholarship! Animish was on a summer internship last summer as a software engineer with All Play. If you would like to read the Q&A with Animish, go to EA's website.
Congratulations to Animish!
about the EA Scholarship:
Every summer, EA awards scholarships to EA interns and co-ops in honor of retired Board Members Dick Asher, Tim Mott and Gary Kusin, with an additional scholarship added this year for Linda Srere.
EA awards two $10,000 and three $5,000 scholarships to the applicants that best demonstrated passion, potential and financial need. Students were asked to submit essays on why they deserve the scholarship, why they want to work at EA, along with their transcripts, a recommendation letter from a manager or studio executive and their midpoint evaluation. The five recipients were determined by a panel of judges comprised of some of our top executives and talent experts at EA.
In a story about sexism in the video game industry, Pittsburgh Post Gazette writer Maria Sciullo, talks to Drew Davidson, Acting Director of the ETC, Distinguished Professor of the Practice Jesse Schell, alunma Melanie Lam and first year student, Allison Sommers.
Historically, when you're talking about hard-core [games], it's been young guys making games for other young guys," said Drew Davidson, director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
" 'Verbs' are what you can do in a game: the verbs around a first-person shooter are arranged around combat and fighting. As game designers have expanded the verbs of what you can do, it's opened up more possibilities for more people to want to play. And one of the biggest-growing areas is women over 45."
Mr. Schell agreed it's better to have a variety of perspectives: "There are projects in our industry that go too long and try to do too much. I often think if there were more women in the game industry, things might be a little saner."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/life/lifestyle/video-game-sexism-und...
In an article on Remake Learning Blog of the Pittsburgh Kids+Creativity Network, Barbara Ray takes a look at how Pittsburgh is fast becoming a national leader in game-based learning. The article mentions ETC Distinguished Professor of the Practice, Jesse Schell, ETC alunma Sabrina Culyba, co-founder and designer at Interbots and ETC acting Director Drew Davidson.
To read the article, click here.
ETC alum Asi Burak (06) and Michelle Byrd of Games for Change has a great article in the New York Times about their Half the Sky Movement: The Game
If the Half the Sky game takes off and the money is claimed quickly, the producers hope other sponsors will step in, said Michelle Byrd, co-president of Games for Change, a nonprofit that promotes the creation of so-called social impact games and is the game’s executive producer, along with Show of Force Productions.
Asi Burak, also co-president of Games for Change, said the hope is to draw two million to five million players, persuading 5 percent or more to donate. Players can play at no charge, but they will make faster progress through donations.
Those usage figures would put the game in the top rungs of social cause gaming.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
