UK Academic Team Blog : Games

Imagine Cup Registrations

ukacademia — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:44:17 GMT

Hello Everyone,

Interest for the Imagine Cup has been strong and we can confirm the various categories are now open for competition. From experience we know that the next couple of months will be key in getting great UK representation in the Imagine Cup.

Here are just a few of the reasons for encouraging your students to compete:

- PR: The Imagine Cup attracts the attention of both regional and national newspapers, together with technology and education press and news websites such as the BBC. Having students from your university compete in the Imagine Cup is great for raising the profile of your university in two important ways. Firstly it demonstrates the quality of your graduates to IT employers and makes them more attractive as employees (e.g. Dominic Green, UK winner of the 2008 competition) and secondly, it attracts new students to your university.

- Skills Development: Fundamentally the Imagine Cup is about helping students get real world experience with Microsoft technology. The skills learned during the various competitions compliment their studies and are invaluable when students apply for jobs with IT companies.

- Students Inspiration: With every technology interest area catered for, the competition is a great way to channel students’ passion for technology out of class.

We want as many UK institutions and students to get involved with the Imagine Cup as possible, and to help you participate we provide:

- Giveaways for students: Every week we give away web cams and Starbucks vouchers. We also hold a monthly draw for a Dell laptop, providing everything a student needs to see them through their studies and the Imagine Cup competition.

- Donation of an Xbox 360 gaming lab kit for your university: The university with the most registrations will receive 4 Xbox 360s, 8 wired controllers and an assortment of the latest Xbox 360 titles. You are free to use them for XNA development or as a social/recreation area for students.

If you would like to receive regular updates on the registration numbers from your university then please let me know and I will happily send them to you. You can contact me by telephone (0118 909 3409) or if you prefer by email (mailto:ukacinfo@microsoft.com).

And just to give you an idea of how we are doing so far, here are the top fifteen universities with the highest number of registrations:

University	Registrations
Brighton	89
Birmingham City	38
Cumbria	38
Bradford	37
Reading	35
Robert Gordon	35
Derby	31
Nottingham	24
De Montfort	23
Keele	23
Cambridge	20
Hull	20
Imperial College	20
Brunel	18
RHUL	20

If you would like to know more, them please email or telephone me. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

Good luck,

Allison

Student Technology Day - Microsoft Research Talk on CS Inside Halo 3 True Ranking System

ukacademia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:53:11 GMT

For those of you who joined us at the Royal Festival Hall on 1st October and, especially for those who were otherwise engaged, please find below the session by Thore Graepel, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela and Ralf Herbrich on Microsoft Research Talk on CS Inside Halo 3 True Ranking System:

If you are unable to view the above clip, please do let me know.

Best wishes,

Allison

Windows Embedded Seminars

ukacademia — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:58:02 GMT

Last week I posted news about the Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems Event at TVP on 21st October.

Following on from that post, I’d also like to tell you about a series of online seminars relating to specific aspects of Windows Embedded technology. While not perhaps for those of you already teaching embedded technologies, the seminars may prove useful if you are considering future curriculum developments.

Windows Embedded and Gaming
16th September 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Kiosk Solutions
13th November 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Industrial Automation
19th February 2009
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Medical Solutions
30th April 2009
9:00 - 10:00

If any of the above are of interest, you can get further information by clicking here.

Best,

Allison

Pixel Poetry

ukacademia — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:14:17 GMT

Hi,

It was our very great pleasure to sponsor and support the Microsoft Photography Competition at the Department of Engineering 2008, at the University of Cambridge.

Blue Spikes, by Sonja Findeisen-Tandel

If proof were needed, these photographs exemplify the strong connection between art and science and that engineering particularly, has an inner beauty. The winning photograph, Blue Spikes, by Sonja Findeisen-Tandel, together with other stunning entries can be viewed at Microsoft Photography Competition at the Department of Engineering.

Which puts me in mind on Imagine Cup 2009 and the category for best photo story. It isn’t too soon to get your students involved and thinking about the competition. You never know, the lucky winner could be from your university and joining us in Cairo for the world finals. The next set of photographs could be of the pyramids and feluccas on Nile.

For an overview of the photo story competition please visit Photo Story.

All the best,

Allison

Gamesfest 2008

ukacademia — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:21:55 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I thought you might like to hear about Gamefest 2008 which takes place on 6^th August at Chelsea Football Club and particularly, I thought you’d like to know about the early bird savings on registration if you book before midnight on 25^th July 2008.

Gamefest 2008 is a full-day game technology conference with a keen industry focus, including a Gamefest Expo of exhibiting Games Tools and Middleware Companies together with Authorized Test Vendors and is aimed at key personnel from small game studios to the largest game publishers.

There are forty talks across seven tracks ranging from Graphics to Producer & Business Development. In the Casual Games and XNA Game Studio track, for example, you will hear about Game Studio networking, performance, XNA Framework Content Pipeline and much, much more. You’ll also learn about plans to enable developers to drive the next wave of growth across the games industry.

So do come along and join us for a day of serious play.

Allison

Coming soon - the ability to publish your XNA game on Xbox Live Marketplace

ukacademia — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:23:00 GMT

We are excited to announce the impending release of XNA Games Studio 3.0 this summer giving (among other things) the ability for all XNA authors to publish games to Xbox Live Marketplace and in the process, to earn reputation, fame and even income. This represents a huge opportunity for your students. You can read all about this on the XNA Team Blog and also FAQ on the XNA forums.

To compliment this new development we have opened out access to the XNA Creators' Club via DreamSpark. This new programme gives access to key developer tools for all students (and academics). In addition, the XNA Creators Club website is going to get a bunch of new features too.

Finally, start saving up, XNA Game Studio 3.0 will also enable multiplayer gaming on the Zune over a wireless link. The Zune has not yet hit the UK market but we know you will want one when they arrive.

Claire

Why Rare recruits games graduates

ukacademia — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:46:00 GMT

The academic team has enjoyed working with Rare over the past 18 months and it seems they have enjoyed it too, so much so that Nick Burton has put pen to paper (OK, type to screen) to bring our attention to some great facts.

You might be surprised to learn that 90% of roles at Rare go to graduates. You might have forgotten that Rare offer free lectures to games students. Read the article here in Gamasutra, to find out why.

Claire

PS Don't forget to share this with your students!

Only 4 days left to claim your early bird 10% discount off the Games Development in Computer Science 08 conference

ukacademia — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:06:14 GMT

The UK has a well deserved reputation in the field of Games Development and yet so far is not well represented at this world-class conference aboard the luxury Celebrity Century cruise ship, . It promises to be a very informative and fun event and will provide an excellent opportunity for networking too. If you have any questions then please let me know.

Claire

General session and tech talk speakers include:

Henry Kelly, President, Federation of American Scientists

John Cash, Technical Director, Blizzard Entertainment

Sam Glassenberg, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft

Steve Seabolt, VP, Global Brand Development, Electronic Arts

Colleen McCreary, Director of Corporate HR & Diversity, Electronic Arts

Matt Brown, Design Director, Sims Label, Electronic Arts

Andrew Brownsword, Electronic Arts, Senior Software Engineer – could be a tech talk.

August De los Reyes, Sr. User Experience Designer, Microsoft

Dennis Wixon, User Research Manager - Halo, Microsoft

Randy Pausch, CMU, Alice Project

Wanda Dann, CMU, Alice Project

Cory Ondrejka, Linden Lab - 2nd Life

Ben Sawyer, Serious Games

Raph Koster --Designer of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies

Steve Theodore, Bungie, Technical Director

Chris Hoffman, Purdue

Mark Overmars, Utrecht University

Academic papers accepted through a peer review process include:

Game2Learn: Improving the motivation of CS1 students

Game Design and Development Students: Who are They?

Bringing a pioneer games project to the next level.

Adding Handheld Game Programming to a Computer Science Curriculum.

Gaming for Middle School Students: Building Virtual Worlds.

Group Interactions in a Game Engine Class.

Impact of Game Design on Students' Interest in CS.

A Hybrid Approach to Projects in Gaming Courses.

A Game Framework to Enhance Stem Pipeline.

The ETH Game Programming Laboratory: A Capstone for Computer Science and Visual Computing.

Assessing Game-Themed Programming Assignments for CS1/2 Courses

Integrating Games and Machine Learning in the Undergraduate Computer Science Classroom

Introduction to Game Design in the Large Classroom

Games, Robots, and Robot Games: Complementary Contexts for Introductory Computing Education

Operating A Computer Science Game Degree Program

XNA v2 Beta - ready to download.

ukacademia — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Ed Dunhill is on the case again and today blogged about the XNA v2 beta which is now ready to download. His post gives all the detail you need to get started and you will be pleased to read that it is free and no uninstalling of v1 is required.

Let us know what you think!

Claire

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