By Tracey John

Ask any game developer about schools that offer game development programs, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t name Full Sail University.

The school -- which is based in Winter Park, Fla. -- was one of the first to offer several degree programs for would-be game-makers, including four-year degrees in game development and game art, as well as a Master of Science for game design. And you don’t have to be near the Orlando area to get a degree: The school is one of the few that have online programs for both game design and game art. Currently, over 1,900 students are enrolled in the game development classes at Full Sail University.

 

By Matt Ployhar

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been cleaning out my contacts database. This is something I’ve been dreading for a long time, since the database currently has something like 16,000 contacts in it. That’s right: 16,000. Frankly, it was getting a bit unwieldy and difficult to find active contacts, so it was time for me to roll up my sleeves and just tackle it.

Well, after three solid days of cross-checking to see who was where and what the status of the company was, my ISV (independent software vendors) contacts tab alone went from nearly 13,500 contacts down to a little over 10,000. I’m guessing only a third of my entire database still contains what I’d call “active” contacts. So what happened?

By Garret Romaine

Can you name the country that leads the world in movie ticket sales and the number of films produced? Hint: It’s not the United States. According to online sources, that country is India. Thanks to the huge demand for entertainment, India has become a hotbed for computer graphics and animation. The country offers talented technicians, competitive pricing and finished work of the highest quality, all on blockbuster titles you’re sure to recognize.

By John Gaudiosi

Electronic Arts’ BioWare studio has come a long way since first launching Mass Effect on the PC. What began as an epic single-player experience has expanded into a new cooperative gameplay mode with Mass Effect 3. Up to four players can engage in exclusive co-op firefights on top of the epic conclusion of the single player campaign. And speaking of Epic, that game studio’s Unreal Engine 3 technology continues to push the visuals and gameplay experience of the franchise thanks to BioWare’s many technical implementations over the years. By John Gaudiosi

Having sold more than 9 million­­ copies of medieval hit-man simulator Assassin’s Creed II, publisher UbiSoft opted to take a bold step with its sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Unsatisfied with simply letting players stalk targets through ancient Rome’s streets and make acrobatic getaways, Ubisoft decided to add eight-man online head-to-head support to a leading franchise known primarily for its story-driven solo campaigns. It was a potentially fatal gamble, but Arnaud Mametz, lead designer at UbiSoft Annecy , reveals how the series successfully made the jump without committing career suicide.

 

There is so much talk about games these days. With the advent of tablets and smartphones, the platforms available to play games on are ever increasing. With the runaway success of social games like Farmville, the types of games available to play have also exploded, and with them a new genre of game players who I call “social gamers.”

At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, a tablet won the Best of Show award, and the thought crossed my mind: I wonder what this means to the different gaming platforms? Is there a compelling proposition for PC or non-console game developers?

Whether 3D moves beyond a stylistic evolution and becomes a revolution, though, has yet to be seen. As some developers and players note, the unique visual effect of 3D -- with the initial disorientation of viewing a scene with an illusion of depth and then continuing to direct the action -- can take some getting used to. However, the PC games that have made the jump to 3D run the gamut, including StarCraft II, Call of Duty: Black Ops, World of Warcraft and Duke Nukem Forever.

PC developers need to spend much less time tweaking the rendering effects in their games, as opposed to more than several months to rewrite a console game engine from the ground up to support 3D. And Mick Hocking, a vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and the head of the company’s 3D initiative, says that while some of the technology used to produce high-quality 3D displays has existed for a long time, it’s only recently become available at a consumer price point.

With these things in mind, what do developers who are interested in 3D need to know?

As head of Electronic Arts’ The Sims division -- the best-selling PC franchise of all time -- Executive Vice President Rod Humble of Electronic Arts has reached the pinnacle of gaming success. He gets to call the shots on some of the highest-profile, biggest-revenue projects in the industry.

You would think he’d want to do anything but design more games at the end of his long, intense days. Think again. Humble blows off steam by cooking up home-brewed games intended to be a form of combination art. His indie efforts -- available on his personal site, Rodvik.com -- include an oddly boxy interaction game called The Marriage, a constellation creator called Stars Over Half Moon Bay, a look at the final days of an extinct species of cattle called Last Thoughts of the Aurochs, and the soon-to-be-released Perfect Distance, which follows a former artillery officer through life.

By John Moore

Construct 2 is an HTML5 game engine and the product of Scirra, a London-based software firm launched in June 2011. The software provides a boost to beginning game-makers, as the engine does not require programming experience. But the company says Construct 2 has sufficient power to “let experts work even quicker than by coding.” We recently talked to Ashley Gullen, a director at Scirra, who provided a few tips on working with Construct 2.

By Stu Horvath

Last year, we investigated the game development program at the NYU Game Center. Founded in 2008, the center specializes in games-focused study for undergrads and grad students, but so far has only offered an undergraduate minor. Late last year, the center announced it will launch a master’s program starting in fall 2012. We spoke with director Frank Lantz about the now even-more-promising future of gaming at NYU.