The Guildhall at SMU Alumni News | Fall 2008

Upcoming Events:

• Austin Game Developers Conference: September 15 – 17, 2008 Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, Booth #222, www.austingdc.net
• AGDC Industry Reception, hosted by The Guildhall at SMU, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m., Iron Cactus Mexican Grill and Margarita Bar, 606 Trinity Street, Austin, TX 78701 (see invite)
• The Guildhall at SMU Open House, Saturday, September 20,2008 10 a.m. – 12 noon (see invite)
• The Guildhall at SMU 5th Anniversary GIGANTIC Block Party, Saturday, September 20, 2008, 12 noon – 3 p.m. (see invite)
• SMU Home Football Games: The Boulevard at SMU, Dallas Campus, Tent #40 near SMU School of Engineering
• Cohort 9 Career Fair, November 6-7, 2008

In This Issue:

• "Just- One" Referrals Paying Off
• Wrap Up: Game Education Summit Alumni Panel
• Wrap Up: Cohort 8 Career Fair
• Meet New Faculty at The Guildhall at SMU
• C5 Team Shirt/Toy Box Heroes a 2008 IGF Showcase Winner @ Austin GDC
• Bridge to MIT: Come Back as an Advanced Standing Student
• Alumni Close Up: Dave Loyd
• Alumni News

The new recruitment initiative “Just-One” referral program for The Guildhall at SMU has been paying off with at least four Cohort 11 students receiving referrals from Guildhall alumni. The referral program’s purpose is to encourage Guildhall alumni to be a part of the application process of entering cohorts. All alumni who refer potential students will receive a new Guildhall hooded sweatshirt. This quarter’s winners of the free hooded sweatshirts are: Tricia Swanson (Cohort 6), Ryan Galbraith (Cohort 6), Tommy Westerman (Cohort 5) and Craig Bernardo (Cohort 3.) To participate in the “Just-One” program, just send the email address of a potential Guildhall applicant to Rene Archambault at rarchamb@smu.edu.

The first national Game Education Summit was held on June 10 - 11 in Dallas. The goal of the summit was for game industry leaders and educators to develop future programs to solve what many experts believe is the video game industry’s greatest problem…a critical shortage of skilled professionals. Keynote speaker Colleen McCreary of Electronic Arts was joined by speakers and panelists from major university game programs, video game studios, publishers and technology leaders for two full days of discussions and workshops.

Alumni from The Guildhall at SMU (Ryan Jenkins with Volition/THQ), Carnegie Mellon (Seth Shain with Midway Austin) and Full Sail University (Rusty Sempsrott with Midway Games) came together to share their experiences in the game development industry. Panelists discussed what they learned at their respective schools, what was applicable from their education in their first studio job and what they had wished that they had known during the interview process.

The Cohort 8 career fair in June was a successful endeavor on both sides of the interviewing desk. Two alumni, Dane Munkholm (Cohort 5 – Budcat Creations) and Patrick Dempsey (Cohort 7 – Ignition Entertainment) interviewed candidates for their companies, and eight Guildhall alumni participated as interviewees.

Out of 15 game studios present, seven were new participants: ZeniMax Online Studios/Bethesda Softworks, BudCat Creations, Big Fish Games, Big Huge Games, Ignition Entertainment, Obsidian Entertainment and Foundation 9. Another feature was the SMU networking reception for studio representatives, graduates and alumni, held at the new NYLO Hotel, located near The Guildhall in Plano.

The next career fair for Cohort 9 and SMU alumni will be held November 6-7, 2008. If you as a job candidate or your company wish to participate, please contact Tricia Skinner at tricia@smu.edu.

The Guildhall at SMU has added two new faculty members:

Ed Clune/Lecturer in Software Development and Team Game Production

Ed Clune, former senior manager of central technology at Activision Publishing, entered the game industry in 1996 as a scripter on the title Zork Nemesis. Since then, Ed has been involved in the support of many PC titles for OEM release and localization, including the first wave of DVD releases. He most recently managed installers, copy protection and release standards for PC titles as well as reviewed technologies and technology proposals for use with Activision titles.

Prior to working at Activision, Ed worked as a programmer for a startup in Silicon Valley named Interactive Network. He later spent time developing Optical Character Recognition software at Caere Corp. Ed’s interest in video games as a career started while taking film classes in Silicon Valley, joining his computer technical knowledge with an interest in creative storytelling in filmmaking.

For the past year, Ed has been involved with the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) on the board of directors and in several sub-committees, and will continue his involvement while serving as a lecturer at The Guildhall at SMU.

Ed received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering degrees from Carnegie Mellon University with research interest in systolic arrays, robotic vision and fractals.

Paul Toprac/Lecturer in Game Studies

Paul Toprac holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Technology from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Texas at Austin. He developed and taught UT’s longest lasting course on digital games. Paul’s dissertation work involved the design, development, and implementation of a digital game to help middle school students not only learn science, but continue to be motivated to learn science, after engaging the game. Prior to graduate school, Paul was the executive director of the Austin Technology Council and has been part of the information technology industry for more than 20 years, where his roles ranged from CEO to product manager to consultant. Paul also holds a Master’s of Business Administration and a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

(as reprinted from Gamasutra, July 28, 2008)

The organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced the nine winners of the Austin GDC IGF Showcase, picking the very best examples of 'local flavor' in terms of indie games from Austin and the Southern U.S. to be exhibited at the Austin Game Developers Conference from September 15th to 17th.

Some of the top local titles span the gamut from one-man teams through tightly focused console indies, including Texas-honed games such as physics-heavy iPhone puzzler Enigmo, CosMind's evocative art-game Glum Buster, Red Fly Studios' Wii/DS quirky Mushroom Men duo, The Guildhall at SMU knockabout student title ToyBox Heroes, and user-generated game website Mockingbird.

The Showcase winners receive complimentary passes and get to showcase their titles in a special IGF Pavilion at the Austin event, which this year features learning tracks including Online, Audio, Writing, Worlds In Motion and Game Career Seminar, and is hosting a local Independent Games Festival Showcase for the first time.

About ToyBox Heroes (Action/Adventure, PC)

Developer: Team Shirt @ The Guildhall at SMU (Jacquiline "Kim" Acuff, Arturo Caballero, Christopher Cotton, David Demaree, James Farmer, Mark Flieg, Ryan Jenkins, Jonathan Long, Dane Munkholm, Jonathan Pittman, Adam Reynolds, Brandon Souders, Daniel Talaber, Benjamin Wagley, Eric Young)

Description: "Toybox Heroes is a console-style physics-based fighting game for two to four players. Players select one of four action figures, each available in four colors, and duke it out in a variety of household environments. Weapons range from crayons to cherry bombs to Rubik's Cubes. As players receive and inflict damage, their rage meters build; once full, each character may unleash a unique special move."

The Admission with Advanced Standing program was designed to allow all graduates who have already earned a Certificate in Digital Game Development and who meet all academic requirements for admission into the degree program to apply for admission with advanced standing into the Master’s degree program. For more details, please click here: http://guildhall.smu.edu/Advanced-Standing-Info.204.0.html

SMU Graduates First Student from Five Year Game Development Program

Dave Loyd Receives B.S. in Computer Science and Master’s in Interactive Technology

It was a very busy two weeks in July for SMU software development graduate student Dave Loyd. Not only was he the first student to graduate from SMU’s five year dual degree program from The Guildhall at SMU along with SMU’s School of Engineering, but he was also the commencement speaker. By the end of the next week, Dave and his family headed east to Gainesville, Florida to start his career as an engine programmer at Ignition Entertainment. In between graduation and moving, Dave’s wife Gretchen had their first baby.

As the first Guildhall graduate of SMU’s five year dual degree program, Dave received a bachelor’s of science in computer science in May, 2007 from SMU’s School of Engineering and a master’s in interactive technology (MIT) in digital game development in July from The Guildhall at SMU. For Dave, graduation was the final step in his quest for a career in the video game industry.

“I’ve been playing video games all my life. I’ve owned practically every hand held, PC and console game ever created. I wanted to work in the game industry, but I had neither the training nor the skills to achieve that goal until I came to SMU,” Dave said.

After a tour of duty in the Air Force and a short stint as an IT specialist, Dave went to the University of Colorado-Denver to study computer science. After two years, he realized UC-D didn’t have the game development educational tools he needed beyond a bachelor’s degree to help fulfill his dream of creating video games.

“Since the game industry is so hard to get into, an undergraduate degree in computer science usually isn’t enough. I searched the internet for game development education and found The Guildhall at SMU,” Dave said. “I lucked out, because SMU Engineering had just started the five year plan with The Guildhall at SMU. I could finish my bachelor’s in computer science at SMU and also get a master’s in game development, so I transferred to SMU right away.”

When asked about his experience with The Guildhall at SMU, Dave said, “I’m at least ten times the programmer I was in my undergraduate years. The amount of programming I did at The Guildhall, using advanced programming, math and physics, was the rigorous and challenging training I needed to take me to the next level.”

Cohort 1

Brian Traugott is working for Mythic Entertainment on Warhammer Online. To the right is a screen shot from the game that he is working on.

Brad Roepstorff with Pandemic Studios will be shipping Mercenaries 2 shortly.

Ted Brown is the Lead Level Designer on Tomb Raider: Underworld for Wii/PS2. He was also one of the winners of the mini-game design challenge on Next Generation.

Chuck Nicholson is currently working for EA Mythic on the Warhammer Online project. Since leaving The Guildhall at SMU, he has shipped Quake IV and Star Trek: Legacy. Pictured left is his 11- month- old son Drake.

Cohort 2

Brad Anderegg is currently working at Alion Science and Technology in Virginia Beach, VA, working on an open source game and simulation engine Delta3D (http://delta3d.org). He recently co-authored an article published in the book “AI Game Programming Wisdom 4,” and is working on a Delta3D tutorial for the ITSEC conference (http://www.iitsec.org/).

Joshua Noble is still with Paradigm/THQ and just recently returned from Rainbow Studios (another THQ studio) for a 5 month level art project on Deadly Creatures for the Wii.

Jacqueline Gan, with Goliath Software, traveled abroad to Argentina to visit the first game development studio in Buenos Aires.

Jeff Browne is working at Bethesda Softworks on Oblivion and its downloadable content. He has also worked on the Oblivion expansion pack called Shivering Isles and levels for Fallout 3.

Sam Arguez is now an associate producer with Bungie.

Jennifer Canada with Vicious Cycle Software has shipped Curious George, Flushed Away and Dead Head Fred and is currently working on Ben Ten: Alien Force.

Cohort 3

Jason Morales and his wife have recently welcomed a baby boy, Jacob (pictured left) and he is currently working at Gearbox Software on the Aliens: Colonial Marines project.

Cohort 4

Chris Willis-Ford left MumboJumbo in April and moved to Colorado to join the Lego Universe team at NetDevil.

Cohort 5

Benjamin Lewis is working for id Mobile and will be releasing Wolfenstein RPG mobile around the end of the year.

Joo-Won Kim participated in the Danskin Women’s Triathlon in Austin, TX.

Andrew Strickland is working for Method studios, whose partners are Apple and Nokia.

Travis Hoffstetter, with High Moon Studios, recently shipped The Bourne Conspiracy. He was able to travel to the UK, France and Spain on PR trips to promote the title.

James Farmer, with Gearbox Software, recently released Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway.

Susan Arnold is now working for Treyarch in Los Angeles and is working on the new Bond title. She is pictured left with her twin sister at a mud run.

James Stewart is working for Visual Concepts/2K Sports on NBA 2K9.

Josh Szepietowski is still working for KingsIsle Entertainment in Austin, TX and is currently working on Wizard101.

David Demaree is also working for KingsIsle Entertainment in Austin, TX on the Wizard101 title. Maethee Chongchitnant, with Pandemic Studios, is currently working on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which will ship in November.

Cohort 6

Zachary Francks is working as a designer at 5TH Cell Media in Bellevue, WA and recently released a hybrid tower defense/real-time action game called Lock’s Quest.

Cohort 7

Dave King is working for Pi Studios and has recently released Rock Band for the Wii. Dallas Middleton, with Raven Software in Madison, WI is currently working on a first person shooter titled Singularity.

Cohort 8

Dave Loyd and his wife Gretchen had a baby boy, Miles, shortly after graduation from The Guildhall at SMU. He and his family moved to Gainsville, FL to start his career as an engine programmer at a game development studio of Ignition Entertainment.

Copyright © 2008 The Guildhall at SMU. All Rights Reserved.
Photos of games belong to their respective developers, studios, and publishers.