Students win top honors in game narrative review competition

February 19, 2014

Five Dakota State University students were recently awarded top honors in a Game Narrative Review competition for the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), to be held in San Francisco, March 2014.

DSU student, Mostafa Haque, a sophomore majoring in game design, won one of three Platinum level awards, for which he will receive a free All-Access pass to GDC, which is the largest professional game design conference in the industry.  Four other students, Andrew Koerner, a senior English major from Freeman, S.D.; Sean Daily, a senior game design major from Burnsville, Minn.; Zachary Truesdell, a senior game design major from Soldotna, Alaska; and Mariah Beem, a senior game design major from Baltic, S.D.; won Gold-level awards, qualifying them for a free Expo pass to the GDC.  All five students are now qualified to participate in a poster session at the GDC, where they can present their analyses and network with game designers and developers.

 The Game Narrative Review competition is a highly publicized and intensely competitive national competition that has historically been dominated by schools like M.I.T. and Carnegie Melon. Leading game design programs at universities across the country, including DSU, integrate the competition into their academic curricula. Each participating student conducts a detailed structured analysis of the narrative elements of a game title of their choice.

This year, Dr. Jeffrey Howard, Assistant Professor of Game Development and Design at DSU, assigned his fall 2013 class, Game 360: Narrative Design, to submit an analysis of a game narrative to the competition.

“The fact that DSU performed so successfully in the competition reflects highly on their hard work, understanding of game design, and writing abilities,” stated Howard.

The student’s reviews were judged by a panel of world-renowned game narrative designers from major companies.  The lead judge, Richard Dansky, has been a keynote speaker at Nanocon/IDiG twice, where he spoke to and inspired DSU game design students.

To view all winning entries in the Game Narrative Review, go to http://www.gdcvault.com/gamenarrativereview.