News
Game Design and Development MS

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.

RIT offers some of the best game design and development programs for aspiring game developers, according to new international rankings from The Princeton Review. RIT’s game design and development program was ranked fourth at the undergraduate level and fifth at the graduate level on the 2021 list.

RIT’s Creative Industry “Day” drew a wide range of talent seekers from companies such as Amazon, Forbes Media, and Microsoft last week, as the 16th annual event went virtual Feb. 22-26 this year due to the pandemic.

Mic mentions the School of Interactive Games and Media, highlighting the game design and development program.

With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, Dartmouth College student Clara Pakman decided to take a “gap year” and focus on experiential learning. This fall, her COVID gap year led her to RIT, for a unique course that she had always wanted to take.

Professionals interested in learning how to use Unreal Engine to create interactive 3D can now do it online with RIT’s Unreal Engine Foundations Professional Certificate program on edX.

RIT’s MAGIC Center and Vicarious Visions (VV), a game studio well-known for some of the industry’s most iconic franchises, have signed a partnership agreement that will include new collaborations and scholarship opportunities for students in RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and College of Art and Design.

Four of the best games created at RIT this year were recently honored in the IGM Games Showcase. More than 20 analog, digital, augmented reality and virtual reality games were submitted to the judging panel. Prizes were awarded to games in four categories.

Associate Professor Brian Tomaszewski is working to create interactive coronavirus maps that provide deeper insight into the spread of COVID-19 in the hope that the public can use these mapping tools to help fight the pandemic.

One brick at a time — that’s how members of RIT’s Electronic Gaming Society are building a digital version of the RIT campus in the video game Minecraft. As universities across the country closed their campuses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students went to Minecraft as a way to stay connected with their schools. The game allows multiple players to collaborate on building structures and designing landscapes, including recreating physical places.