Interactive Games and Media

We're hosting several corporate visits this fall for student recruitment and presentation. We've already welcomed Microsoft to campus for the first of many visits, we'll be hosting the Lucasfilm Jedi Academy on October 2nd, Vicarious Visions (an Activision studio) on October 4th, Zynga on October 8th, and many more throughout the year! In addition the RIT Fall Career Fair is October 26-27. so get those resumes ready and those portfolios polished! As a special note, we look forward to the fact that for several of these upcoming visits our own alumni are coming back to campus to help recruit for their studio, and we can't wait to visit with you. More details are in the IGM Calendar, the weekly News You Can Use, and the various Facebook groups associated with the programs.

Just Press Play is all shiny and new both inside and out. We hope you enjoy playing with us. Want to get started and have some fun reflecting on the IGM experience? Just head over to the JPP site and start playing! When you want your cards and Play Pass, stop by the IGM office, or print your QR code yourself from the website. We hope to see you there!

IGM is proud to co-host the IEEE Games Innovation Conference 2012 event with our colleagues at the Strong National Museum of Play in early September. There are a number of nationally renowned keynote speakers, an incredible line-up of papers and presentations, and several other events and activities throughout the week at both RIT and the Museum of Play! Student and faculty are invited to register at the conference website - we hope to see you there!

Professor Andrew Phelps, Professor and Director of IGM, gave an address at the Serious Play Conference in Redmond, Washington. The address covered our growing understanding of games as not only a creative medium, but a tool for reflection and cultivation of creative thinking by players and collaborators world-wide. More information is available through the Serious Play Conference website.

Just Press Play, a game layer for student success in IGM, was featured in an article on games transforming higher education by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Professor Elizabeth Lawley was quoted as she and her team of researchers have tried to incorporate video game technology on a wider level—such as engagement with the campus community, willingness to talk to professors and to make friends, form study groups, etc.—that help students succeed. Read the whole article here.

The National Science Foundation has awarded Second Avenue Learning a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to continue development of Martha Madison’s Marvelous Machines, a collaborative physical science game for middle school students that aims to change education. The grant will fund development of the game, building off the prototype built in 2011. This work is supported by partnership with IGM and Professors Christopher Egert, Adrienne Decker and David Simkins.

IGM presented Just Press Play to a warm reception at the Games for Change festival in New York City this June, as a part of the Games 4 Learning Institute program on games and learning. Also presenting was IGM board member Dr. Mary Flanagan from Tiltfactor Labs / Dartmouth University, and several notables in the games and education field. It was great to be a part of such a cool event!

Science Daily: Suppose someone told you that researchers had discovered that a major cause of vision loss is treatable, and that the most promising new treatment is -- playing video games? It may sound far-fetched, but those are the conclusions of a special article, "Removing the Brakes on Plasticity in the Amblyopic Brain," in the June issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. This work is supported in IGM by Associate Professor Jessica Bayliss, and several students and co-ops, in partnership with the University of Rochester and UC Berkeley.

This new event, part of the E3 Higher Education Summit, will focus on the intersection of games and education, and the essentials to building and growing a successful college or university game program as well as the many ways games are improving the everyday lives of Americans. Participants include: Peter Raad, SMU, Tracy Fullerton, University of Southern California, Luis Cataldi, Savannah College of Art & Design, James Gee, Arizona State, and Charles Duba, DigiPen, in addition to Andrew Phelps, School of IGM at RIT. We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles, and we hope to see many of our friends and alumni at E3!

Each spring IGM holds a showcase of recent work, both as a way to show the rest of the community what we're up to, and also as a chance for reflection on what we did during the year. This year we were grateful to have several companies in attendance: thank you to SONY, Broken Myth Studios, 1st Playable, Second Avenue Software and Blanket Fort Games for your support!