News
Game Design and Development MS

RIT Esports dominated the FACEIT Grand Finals tournament to become the best collegiate CS:GO team in North America this spring. The Tigers bested 68 teams to win the 2022 FACEIT championship, which is one of the main tournaments for collegiate Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) esports.

RIT students have more than 300 clubs and organizations to choose from today. There are also 24 varsity athletics teams and numerous intramural sports, among other groups. For many students, these extracurricular activities are a great way to try something new, find a niche, and build lasting relationships.

Organizers of RIT’s Creative Industry Days saw an increased number of companies, students, and industry participants over last year, as the 17th annual event went virtual for the second consecutive year.

RIT is one of the best places in the world to study game design and develop a career, according to new rankings from The Princeton Review.

Animation Career Review has again named RIT one of the top game design universities in the country. RIT ranked No. 5 on the list of Top 50 Game Design Schools and Colleges in the U.S. and No. 2 in New York state.

Forbes has identified a few of the RIT alumni set to define the next decade—and beyond. Two RIT alumni—and a third just a few months shy of the age cut-off—were named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2022. Jackie Wiley ’16 (game design and development) was honored in the Games category, and Dylan Ayrey ’15 (computer engineering) was named in the Enterprise Technology category.

Rochester-area public school students will create social change using video games at the AT&T & RIT ROCtheChange Game Jam held Jan. 15—the first free youth game jam in the region.

NASA’s Artemis program plans to return humans to the moon by 2025. However, in a new game developed by RIT faculty and students, people can use virtual reality to return even sooner.

RIT ranked No. 6 on the 2021 Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) College Rankings from Animation Career Review. RIT also ranked No. 3 on the east coast and No. 5 among private schools.

Two video games affiliated with RIT won awards at the 2021 Game Developers Conference virtual event in July.

As part of a gameplay and prototyping class at RIT this spring, 25 game design and development students got to participate in a virtual cultural exchange with 30 students at a Japanese college. The teams learned about each other’s cultures and overcame language barriers and time zone differences to create projects for a global game jam.

WROC-TV talks to David Schwartz, director of Interactive Games and Media, and Coehl Gleckner, fifth-year interactive games and media student, about RIT’s game design and development programs.