UC Santa Cruz Games and Playable Media (GPM) interviewed recent alum, Rogelio Espinoza, to learn how his games career has developed since graduating from the GPM program. Espinoza shared some great advice for aspiring game developers, and provided invaluable insight...
Game Data Science, the definitive book on deriving insights from game data, launches today. Published by Oxford University Press, the book is available for purchase on Amazon. Written by Prof. Magy Seif El-Nasr, with collaborators Trong-Huy Nguyen Dinh, Alessandro...
The James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) awarded Magy Seif El-Nasr, Serious Games Vice-Chair, and Elin Carstensdottir, Assistant Professor of Games and Playable Media, a $250,000 grant to study resilience through the use of virtual environments. Their teams will...
Students from the GPM MS were the focus of the latest episode of Waypoint Presents, a documentary series about games and culture currently airing on Disney XD. The episode offers a unique insight into our program and the lives of our students as they...
Many videogames are designed to draw the player ever deeper into the world of the game. At Katherine Isbister's Social Emotional Technology Lab at UC Santa Cruz, however, researchers are interested in games that draw players' attention to the world around...
We are pleased to announce that student game CtrlShift was named "sleeper hit" of last week's E3 conference by the editors of Ars Technica. You can watch the announcement on Ars Technica's website. CtrlShift, as well as undergraduate game Phantom Jump,...
Ulama: Arena of the Gods, a thesis game developed by Pedro Cori, Alexander Formoso, and Cong Liu, is now available to purchase on Steam Early Access. The game was greenlit by the Steam community in just 15 days through Valve's Steam Greenlight service. The gameplay...
Trainwreck Games, consisting of grad students Pedro Cori, Alexander Formoso, and Cong Liu, recently won $10,000 as the winner of the Social Connection GameJam, a game design competition sponsored by the AARP and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The...
Student game AURA, a musical shooter made by GPM alumni Patrick Trinh and Lun Cao, was featured as part of the Intel University Games Showcase during the 2016 Game Developers Conference. The event celebrated the innovation and achievements of games developed by...
The Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz has hired acclaimed independent game developer Erin Robinson Swink to be the creative director of the master’s degree program in games and playable media offered at UCSC’s Silicon Valley Center. The Baskin School of...
Recent GPM graduate Akira Thompson is an award finalist at this year's Indiecade Festival for his game &maybethewontkillyou. The annual event showcases and recognizes independent developers for their innovations in interactive artistry. Akira's game, which was...
The Games and Playable Media MS will be hosting an open house for incoming and prospective students on August 28th, from 1pm-5pm. Attendees will get the opportunity to meet students and faculty and ask questions about the program. If you would like to attend the...