The Guildhall at SMU career fair attracts big players
The Guildhall at SMU’s upcoming career fair will feature eighteen major studios and publishers this week to interview 50 December graduates and alums as future artists, designers and programmers for their companies. Studio and publishers participating in the event include Acropolis, Activision, America’s Army, BioWare, Blizzard Entertainment, Bonfire Studios, Budcat Creations, Controlled Chaos Media, Disney Interactive, Edge of Reality, LucasArts, Insomniac, KingsIsle, Obsidian Entertainment, TimeGate Studios, Total Immersion, Volition, and ZeniMax Media Inc.
The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University is a graduate video game education program. In the last six years, the program has graduated over 300 students, and alums who work at more than 80 video game studios around the world, with several graduates now serving in leadership positions. SMU offers both a Master’s degree and a graduate Professional Certificate of Interactive Technology in Video Game Development, with specializations in art creation, level design, and software development.
For more information on the school and this week’s career fair, visit guildhall.smu.edu.
Video Game Tycoon goes online
The next version in the series promises to let would-be game designers build their own video games and post them online to GAMESweet.com, a web site where anybody can play the games with the free-to-play GAMESweet Player. GAMESweet claims that the original title has been a huge success among young players, particularly in the educational market noting that some middle school programs have incorporated it into their curriculum for teaching video game design. The new online edition of the game promises to give users building blocks that they put together to create a variety of game play scenarios. Each game can have multiple levels, and each level can have many different objectives, bonuses and upgrades.
The ONLINE EDITION also offers new game types to tinker with like first-person-shooters sports games like golf, and new features like the ability to customize object images. The software also includes a simple online posting option so that players can ‘publish’ their games online to GAMESweet.com. The GAMESweet Player, which players will use to play the games people create with the software, is supported in Internet Explorer on the Windows PC platform.
You can find out more about the software by checking out www.GAMESweet.com.
Southpeak to publish Shiro Tsuji’s Music
SouthPeak Interactive will be publishing Music, a musical activity game for Nintendo DS. Music promises a series of fun mini-games, multiple sound quizzes and a complete encyclopedia of more than 400 musical terms, Music is the first title available on Nintendo DS where the player can use their acquired knowledge well beyond the game. The creative force behind Music is Shiro Tsuji, a renowned composer, conductor, teacher and author of “Anybody Can Read Music.” Tsuji influenced the design by translating his lessons into a easy to use dual screen stylus symphony.
Music offers lessons, mini-games, and quizzes and, with the help of the pocket-sized conductor, 18 lessons to learn music. The game does with 65 notable compositions, and the ability to create your own classic compositions - which can be saved and the game can then playback the musical masterpieces.
Music is scheduled for release this fall.
Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintendo DS Released
Just in time for Thanksgiving, Nintendo has released Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintendo DS. The program contains more than 240 dishes from dozens of countries around the world. The DS Chef, an electronic cooking instructor, walks users through each step to make sure every dish comes out perfect and delicious. They’d better or that slop will hit the wall.
Personal Trainer: Cooking includes videos of various cooking techniques, such as how to properly julienne vegetables. The touch screen interface helps users check ingredients on an electronic shopping list they can take to the grocery store. It also lets them search recipes based on ingredients, number of calories or cooking time. When a user’s hands are too covered in the business of cooking to use the touch screen, the voice-recognition feature comes in handy: Just tell the DS Chef to move on to the next step or repeat the last one.
While this product won’t appeal to gamers it will be embraced by casual consumers who need little help in the kitchen or need a sort of food organizer they can refer to. Look for Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintendo DS in stores this week.
