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The Center for Games and Playable Media (CGPM) invites applications from outstanding individuals for a Research Game Developer position. The research game developer will participate in research on autonomous character AI and social simulation, perform development on the autonomous character and social simulation architectures, and author character behaviors and social simulation primitives within the architecture, including the animation solution for character animation. The successful candidate will be expected to author or co-author papers for publication in conferences and journals, and attend and present work at professional conferences.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT

It's been an exciting time since Team Prom Week's last update, including a trip to the Independent Games Festival at the Games Developer Conference.

Although Prom Week didn't take home the grand prize of Technical Excellence, it is--as they say--a supreme honor to even be nominated. Thank you for all of the support you showed Prom Week for the IGF audience choice award!

Team Prom Week has been hard at work developing some top-secret new features and bug fixes, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out a new video which illustrates the fundamentals of Prom Week and Social Physics.

Enjoy!

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Ben Samuel

....and it was our very own, supremely talented Ben Samuel of course!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/business/media/hulu-the-online-tv-site-adds-original-programming.html

Battleground is a hit!

Some key reviewer quotes:

"...its writing and characterizations are significantly better than any of the mid-season comedies that have debuted on TV."

"Relationships emerge along with rivalries as "Battleground" gets into the nitty-gritty tactics of campaigning in a way I haven't seen since the last season of "The West Wing."

"If quality is rewarded, Hulu deserves to have a hit with its first scripted series, Battleground."

-Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"... it does all this with tongue planted knowingly in cheek, so give Battleground credit for understanding what's endearing about this idea. Battleground also gets credit for a solid professional cast."

- David Hinckley, New York Daily News

"Battleground" isn't a straight comedy; it has elements of drama and a political thriller — well, mystery — involving the candidate's sexuality and the libidos of some of her campaign workers that will play out over the show's 13 episodes. We can see the seeds being planted, and it looks as if it would be a well-assembled piece of dramatic machinery."

-Mike Hale, NY Times

BROADCAST TV/RADIO

Bloomberg:Hulu Develops Online TV Content to Attract Viewers

CNN Money:Is Hulu the Next HBO?

Slade Villena, a UCSC Computer Game Design alum, has started a new indie studio, Mercenary Games.

They have just launched a Kickstarter project to raise funds and awareness for their first game, Vigrior.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mercenary-games/vigrior-maneuver-warfare

VIGRIOR is a multi-platform real-time strategy game with a novel gameplay mechanic. Instead of controlling manually selected groups of individual units, you'll control a customized bundle of ships that act as a single, coherent unit; a Fleet. The ships in each fleet fly synchronized with each other, each ship type with a special set of skills.

Please help spread the word and support Slade!

Congratulations are in order for CGPM PhD student Anne Sullivan, whose startup - Play Crafts - is a Venture Play semi-finalist in the Monterey Bay Regional Business Plan Competition.

Co-founded with Jane Pinckard and Gillian Smith, Play Crafts is an online platform for crafters to share ideas playfully.

They will now be going on to compete in the main competition at the Monterey Institute of International Studies on May 4, 2012.

Read more about the competition: http://www.mbrcompetition.com/

Good luck Play Crafts!