Research presentation by Richard Bonneau: Learning and visualizing the networks that control the mammalian immune system: big data vs. big opinions

Date March 2nd, 2012

Time 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Location CREATE LAB, 196 Mercer St., 8th fl.

Richard Bonneau, director of the Bonneau Lab at NYU, and Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Department of Computer Science, will present on “Learning and visualizing the networks that control the mammalian immune system: big data vs. big opinions”

Reception to follow.

Nicholas Negroponte: Design as Strategy

Date November 17th, 2011

Time 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Location NYU

PROFESSOR NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE

DIRECTOR AND FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE MIT MEDIA LAB

FOUNDER ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD (OLPC)

Design as Strategy

Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 6:00 PM

Co-presented by the ECT program in NYU Steinhardt, CREATE, and G4LI.

Open to everyone, but space is limited and will fill up soon, so please RSVP!

Nicholas Negroponte, professor at MIT, was one of the key founders and director of the Media Laboratory until 2000. Conceived in 1980, the Media Lab opened its doors in 1985. Negroponte is also the founder of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a project that was designed to change how people learn with computational devices. OLPC has reached more than 2.5M poor and remote kids, 6-12, in over 40 countries and 25 languages.

A graduate of MIT, Negroponte is a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.

In the private sector, Nicholas Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including WIRED magazine.

In this talk, Negroponte will discuss the challenges he encountered during the first 10 years of birthing the Lab. He will explain how inventive ideas become actualized into tools; how corporate sponsors learn to share the inventions that are created by research faculty working in a design studio environment with doctoral, master, and undergraduate (UROP) students; and, how he envisions a great “Lab of the Future.”

The Three Complications: Solving Technical Challenges w/ Game Design

Date November 16th, 2011

Time 3:00 pm

Location The Game Innovation Lab at NYU-Polytechnic Institute

Talk by: John Scott Tynes, Microsoft Game Studios
(http://gil.cite.poly.edu)

Abstract:
He’ll review three examples from his work of technical challenges that required design work to solve. Titles for discussion will likely include the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO and the XBLA games South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play and Full House Poker.

Bio:
John Scott Tynes has been a writer and game designer since 1990. In the field of tabletop games he founded Pagan Publishing and produced award-winning Call of Cthulhu projects such as Delta Green and The Unspeakable Oath as well as original games including Unknown Armies, Puppetland, and The Hills Rise Wild. He worked at Wizards of the Coast in the early days of Magic: The Gathering as the game’s first dedicated IP developer where he crafted characters and flavor text for the Ice Age and Homelands expansions. As a writer he’s been both a film critic and a videogame critic as well as a screenwriter, novelist, and a writer for videogames at Bungie and Acclaim. In the videogame industry, he was the producer for the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO and lead designer for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play and Full House Poker, which is the best-selling XBLA game of 2011. Currently he works in Microsoft Studios Kids and Lifestyle Entertainment group supervising innovative Xbox projects for a broad audience.

Eric Zimmerman & Charles Pratt “Loving and Hating the Kinect: Designing Full-Body Interactions”

Date November 4th, 2011

Time 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm

Location CREATE Lab, 196 Mercer St, 8F

Loving and Hating the Kinect: Designing Full-Body Interactions

Co-sponsored by CREATE Lab & ECT NYU

Creating games for controller-free, full-body interaction platforms like the Kinect is full of hidden pitfalls and unexpected challenges. This talk outlines a set of best practices based on the experience of creating a retail Kinect title: Leela, published by THQ (release date Nov 2011). The title consists of seven unique games, each based on a different kind of movement and a different part of the player’s body. The games are abstract and somewhat experimental and because of their variety, the process of designing and developing Leela ended up being a fairly comprehensive course on what did and didn’t work on the platform.

The talk will cover the game design challenges of the Kinect platform, including design concepting, prototyping and iteration, designing data input and output structures, strategizing for different body types, Kinect menu interaction challenges, teaching players how to interact, testing and debugging approaches, and other topics.

We learned many lessons the hard way. Despite our frustrations with Kinect, in the end we are happy with how Leela turned out, and we have good things to say about the game platform. Our hope is to share our game design best practices so that other designers and developers can benefit from our experience.

Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, entrepreneur, author, and academic who has been working in the game industry for 15 years.

Eric’s diverse activities have made him one of the New York Observer’s “Power Punks,” one of Interview Magazine’s “30 To Watch,” one of International Design Magazine’s “ID 40” influential designers and one of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Digital 50” along with Stephen Spielberg and Will Wright. Eric recently was honored with a “VIP Award” by the International Game Developers Association for his years of work in the game creation community.
For nine years, Eric was the Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Gamelab, a game development company based in New York City that was named one of 5 “Rising Star” design firms by HOW Magazine.

Eric lectures and publishes extensively on games, including keynotes at major industry events. He is the co-author with Katie Salen of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, the definitive textbook on game design. He is also the co-editor with Katie Salen of The Game Design Reader and co-editor with Amy Scholder of RE:PLAY – Game Design and Game Culture.

Charles J Pratt has been a freelance game designer since he graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in 2007. He’s worked on projects for companies as varied as Adult Swim, Footlocker, and the British government. He’s also been involved with a number of independent games such as the early web-based social game Casablanca, the street game Search Brigade, and most recently a tower defense game for the iPhone called Critter Defense.

In his spare time he teaches Game Studies, he blogs at GameDesignAdvance, and he hosts the podcast Another Castle, a series of long form interviews with people working and thinking about games in the New York metropolitan area.

Dr. Scott Brewster, Triad Interactive Media, on Math Games Monster Mystery and Platinumath

Date October 28th, 2011

Time 9:30 am to 11:00 am

Location CREATE Lab, 196 Mercer St, 8F

Triad Interactive Media’s IES-funded Math Games by Dr. Scott Brewster, Tech Director at Triad Interactive Media

Scott Brewster will discuss and demonstrate two products that his company, Triad Interactive Media, has developed with partial funding from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES)–Math Monster Mystery and Platinumath. Math Monster Mystery (M3) is a computer-adapted Web-based formative assessment game that teaches and measures the mathematical knowledge of students in grades 3 through 5. M3 has 24 mini games integrated into an engaging multimedia narrative, and each game has 6 difficulty levels, which the system adjusts to students’ performance. Platinumath is a suite of Web-based games designed to strengthen preservice teachers’ knowledge of mathematics and provide college instructors with accurate assessments of their students’ mathematical understanding.

Bio: Dr. Scott Brewster is the technology director for Triad Interactive Media, an interactive media firm that specializes in products for education. He has led teams of technology professionals in the development of award-winning interactive learning objects, serious games, and educational multimedia. He holds a Ph.D. in music education and his primary research and teaching experiences are in the areas of educational technology, distance education, and electronic music.

Talk by Muse Games’ Alex Jarocha-Ernst, October 19 at NYU-Poly’s Game Innovation Lab

Date October 19th, 2011

Time 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Location NYU Polytechnic University

ABSTRACT:

“Guns of Icarus Online” uses a highly customized lighting and shading model that creates a visually striking and stylistically unified game experience. This lecture will describe the technical details for creating your own lighting model and the artistic reasons for doing so. Learn why graphics programmers and artists should always work side by side with a shared vision.

ABOUT ALEX JAROCHA-ERNST:

Alex Jarocha-Ernst, lead developer and occasional game designer at Muse Games, earned a master’s degree in computer science from Rochester Institute of Technology. A computer-graphics specialist, he has developed stylized lighting and shading models, post-process images effects, particle and effects behaviors and procedural terrain-generation algorithms. In nearly five years in the game industry, he also has gained experience in numerous aspects of game programming, primarily real-time networking, software architecture, game logic AI, physics, and tools programming. These disparate skills are unified by his strong dedication to creating games that are visually, technically and strategically engaging.

Apply for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing!

Date September 15th, 2011

Time 10:00 am

Location

Calling all digital divas, web chix, and coder girls!

NCWIT seeks high-school-level young women to apply for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing! The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing honors young women active and interested in computing and encourages them to pursue their passion for technology. Winners get cool prizes, gadgets, and scholarships, and can join a community of like-minded technical women. National award-winners are selected from across the country and Affiliate Award competitions are available in more than 30 regions nationwide.  All girls at all computing levels are encouraged to apply—we’d like to recognize aspirations, not just accomplishments!

National award-winners receive:

• $500 in cash
• A laptop computer
• An engraved award (for both the student and her school)
• An expenses-paid trip to the national Award ceremony (for the student and her parent/guardian) on March 10, 2012

Affiliate Award will vary by state.  Visit www.ncwit.org/award for details on Affiliate competitions.

Competition for the 2012 NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing is open to any U.S. high-school-level female (grades 9-12). Applications will be accepted beginning September 15, 2011, and must be submitted online at www.ncwit.org/award no later than 11:59 PM ET on October 31, 2011.  Winners will be announced December 9, 2011.

G4LI is an NCWIT K12 Alliance Member.

G4LI hosts G4C, Games for Learning Day June 22

Date June 22nd, 2011

Time 9:15 am to 4:15 pm

Location New York, NY

Come join us on June 22 for the 2nd Annual Games for Learning Day at G4C, with exciting presentations, microtalks, and keynote speaker Gabe Newell of Valve.

G4LI hosting Math & Science Arcade at World Science Festival

Date June 5th, 2011

Time 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Location NYU's Kimmel Center for University Life, 10th Floor

The Games for Learning Institute will be hosting a Math & Science Arcade with over 25 games for learning at the 2011 World Science Festival Street Fair on Sunday, June 5 from noon-6pm at NYU’s Kimmel Center for University Life, 10th floor. Come learn or just bone up on your math skills while playing fun games like:

Factor Reactor
Factor Reactor is a multiplayer game focusing on arithmetic skills designed and adapted to investigate mode of play. The object of the game is to transform the center number into one of the surrounding goal numbers by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing it by one of the numbers from the inner ring.

Noobs vs. Leets
Noobs vs. Leetts is a puzzle/strategy game designed to introduce and enable mastery of the basic geometry fundamentals of angles, triangles, and quadrilaterals. The Noobs lost their Book of Knowledge to the Leets, and are now dependent on the player to spy on the Leets and teach them the necessary geometry concepts to navigate increasingly complex mazes—by solving angles—in order to rescue their fellow Noobs who have been captured and imprisoned.

Mat-Matics
Mat-Matics is an educational video game that combines integer arithmetic and dancing. It is designed to provide an engaging platform for children of all ages to explore strategies for solving whole number math problems. To play the game, children use their feet on a dance pad to “dance in” the correct answers. Mat-Matics players can adjust the type of operation they want to practice (addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division) as well as the difficulty and the speed of the problems presented. Goal of the game is to solve as many problems as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Scoop!
Utilizing the XBox Kinect, you can manipulate a number line with your own hands. Scoop! allows you to practice your math skills in a fun, supportive and engaging environment. While playing with ice cream and listening to fun music, you will also learn how to place numbers along a number line, learn about equivalent fractions, and gain confidence in your skills and yourself!

Equation Buster
Solve equations through moving! Step, sweep, reach, clap, toss and grab to control elements on-screen. Solving math equations now meets Microsoft’s Kinect for interaction and play!

Plus many more games. Admission is free to the Math & Science Arcade. We hope to see everyone then!