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Microsoft wants U.S. high school, college, and university students to be productive, but not too productive. That's why they're giving away a free 4GB Xbox 360 to students purchasing a Windows 7 PC priced at $699 or higher. More »
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Recently, some controversy has popped up regarding who owns the IP of student-created work; recent events with the award-winning creation of some graduates of DigiPen Institute of Technology have highlighted the problematic nature of what is somewhat par for the course in design programs. On the one hand, while I can see some of the arguments for schools retaining the IP (and certainly, the policies are clear to students from day one), I find some of the arguments downright laughable. With the recent kerfluffle, are policy changes on the horizon?: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5088633&view=rss&microfeed=true Online Videos by Veoh.com This is a video of a game called Oculusia, created by a group of University students at the Aalborg University Copenhagen as part of their bachelor thesis. The game involves protecting sea sponges along the sides of the table from the one-eyed boss in the center by shooting at it, using a deflection paddle to defend the sponges from the boss attacks as well as other players' missed shots. Thomas Miksa, one of the students involved, sent us this video, along with a bit of explanation. More »
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Last year, Nintendo worked with some Japanese students to come up with a few experimental DS games. Now, in a pleasantly surprising move, they'll be releasing these games, free of charge, over Japan's DS download stations. Four games will be available, with each available for two weeks. The first game will be up on March 13, with the last on April 24. There's an eerie, temporal feel about this whole thing: because the games can't be saved, once Nintendo yank them from the service, they're gone. Forever. More »
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As I logged into my school email account this past week, only to be greeted with the news that some libraries are way too protective over their microfilm (damn you, Yale!), a little item on the news section of our login page caught my eye. Microsoft is giving away several full-fledged programs to college students, hoping to lure them away from Adobe-powered and open source software; in addition to Visual Studio Professional Edition and Expression Studio, they're also handing out XNA Game Studio 2.0, including a 12 month trial subscription to XNA Creators Club (plus some other stuff). Under the initiative titled 'DreamSpark,' they're hoping to rope in people early on, with the hopes of reaping the financial benefits later. More »
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Ian Bogost has an interesting analysis of a little 'rhythm' game called Hush, a USC Interactive Media student produced number that uses the 1994 Rwandan civil war as a backdrop. The point of the game is to keep your child calm by singing a lullaby — letters that drop slowly down the screen and must be pressed when they're at their brightest on screen — lest the Hutu patrol finds you (the screen cuts to red, leaving little doubt of what happens if you fail). True vignettes are found rarely in gaming, but Bogost thinks that despite the flaws, Hush points to how vignettes could be incorporated successfully into games and gaming culture: More »
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In another bit of Independent Games Festival, a reminder that entries for the IGF Student Showcase close this Monday (15 October). If you're 13 or older and were a full or part-time high school or college student as of the Spring '07 semester, you're eligible to enter - and they're even accepting entries of game mods. There's more information at the IGF site, but the basic rules and regs are after the jump: More »
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I understand that exams and the weeks surrounding them are stressful. I went to Michigan, I remember it (it wasn't that long ago). A couple of UMich students decided to break some of the stress of studying with a Pac Man plus Ghost zerg through the Undergraduate Library and one of the campus' computer labs. It's captured on shaky-cam here. More »
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