Newsbrief: In a new effort to teach teens about science and technology, the UK-based Science Museum has commissioned a series of free, retro-themed web games for its official website. The games suite, dubbed Futurecade, includes four games that aim to teach players about current and future technology in a number of scientific fields, with topics ranging from bacteria engineering, protecting space satellites, to fighting global warming. The games were developed by the London-based Preloaded, a ...

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at Rockstar, LucasArts, Blizzard Entertainment, and others. Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on independent ...

Veteran game designer Jordan Weisman is now interim director of the University of Washington Bothell's Center for Serious Play, which has just launched its first student game on Facebook. The game, UWB Wetlands Restoration, is a social game with a real correlative to the subject at hand, developed in collaboration with the university's ecology department. The Center itself is a new initiative, just under a year old. Weisman, who established FASA, created series like Shadowrun ...

[Spry Fox chief creative officer Dan Cook considers the definition of plagiarism as it applies to game design, and warns game developers of the consequences of borrowing ideas from other games. Reprinted with permission.] "Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the 'wrongful appropriation,' 'close imitation,' or 'purloining and publication' of another author's 'language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,' and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries. ...

With the 2012 Game Developers Conference just over a month away, its organizers have announced an exciting opportunity to win an All-Access pass to the San Francisco show, revealing a continued onsite partnership with the game artist, marketing, and production group iam8bit for live-drawing of wacky game concepts. This year, GDC will once again partner with the independent artist group iam8bit (creators of last year's 'Painting With Pixels' art exhibit) to bring a similarly inspirational ...

Public media provider Thirteen today published a new educational web game that teaches students about U.S. history by putting them into the shoes of a runaway slave in the years leading up to the Civil War. The game, dubbed Flight to Freedom, is the second in Thirteen's "Mission US" series, which will eventually offer four unique web games intended to complement a traditional history curriculum. The previous title, For Crown or Colony?, covers the events ...

Newsbrief: The organizers behind the 9th annual Games for Change Festival have issued their call for presentations, encouraging game developers to submit talks on the creation of games that facilitate social change. The upcoming event will take place this June in New York City, and will offer sessions spanning game design, business models, individual case-studies, and more, all demonstrating how video games can serve as tools for educational or humanitarian purposes. Those interested in submitting ...

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at Visceral Games, Retro Studios, Ubisoft Massive, and others. Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused ...

Gamasutra staff will not be updating the website between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. PST on Wednesday, January 18, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which despite some recent changes, still remains a very real threat to freedom on the internet. We realize that we do provide a service that many people count on daily. But we strongly believe that ultimately, our readership, which includes many professionals in the video ...

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at PopCap, Wooga, Adbesive Games and others. Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on independent ...

Games for Change has teamed up with Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to develop a social game about female oppression around the world. The project seeks to raise awareness and aid for fighting global injustices against women and girls, by enabling players to purchase virtual goods that count as micro-donations to humanitarian causes. The game is described as a FarmVille-style experience, except players must also look after women and girls in ...

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at Respawn Entertainment, Amazon, 6waves Lolapps, and others. Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on ...

Newsbrief: The second annual Serious Play Conference has opened its call for speakers, urging developers to submit talks on the creation of game applications for corporate, military, education and health purposes. The three-day event will offer a series of lectures on how to best create games that benefit these sectors, and will also host an awards ceremony honoring the most successful projects in the space from professionals and students alike. Last year, the show hosted ...

[Game Developer magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield picks out the top cult games of 2011, from visual feasts to flowing fighters and beyond.] What makes a cult game? I might define "cult" as a title that gains a dedicated audience in spite of low adoption outside a rabid few. Or a game that succeeds in spite of obvious flaws. Then again, perhaps it's simply an experience you remember for months after it's finished, even if you're ...

Organizers of Game Developers Conference 2012 have announced a January 6th, 2012 early registration deadline for the show's GDC Play showcase, which allows emerging game creators to showcase and business match at dedicated individual kiosks on site at the Moscone Center. GDC Play -- which will take place March 6-7 during GDC 2012 -- is a brand new, dedicated program that will give emerging game developers a chance to show off their games to a ...

[Gamasutra EIC Kris Graft continues the website's 2011 retrospectives with this year's top five game industry trends, including the HTML5 buzz, go-getter Kickstarters, and the gravity-defying Xbox 360.] The games industry has a constant ebb and flow -- last year's rising trends might be this year's declining trends. For 2011, Gamasutra's Top 5 Major Industry Trends are all about the rise. Whether it's technology that's gaining traction, unit sales that are defying gravity, or independent ...

In a new study meant to examine the neurological processes behind human multitasking, researchers are examining replay data from Blizzard's StarCraft II to learn how the human brain responds to complex, and often simultaneous demands. The "SkillCraft" project, led by cognitive scientist Mark Blair of Simon Fraser University, gathered more than 4,500 StarCraft II replay files from players of all skill levels, and will use 3,500 of these files to pick apart the myriad cognitive ...

A team of students has won a $100,000 college scholarship as part of the 2011 Siemens Competition, for its work on a bioengineering project that uses the Kinect motion-sensor hardware to help people with leg injuries and ailments. Ziyuan Liu and Cassee Cain, students at The George Washington University, used the Xbox 360 Kinect hardware to analyze the walking patterns of amputees and joint replacement patients. From this, they could gather an accurate outline of ...

The second annual STEM Video Game Challenge has begun accepting game ideas and prototypes from students and educators in a contest designed to encourage science and math education. As with last year's inaugural STEM Challenge, this year's contest sets out to promote science, technology, engineering and math education, both as explicit subjects of the entered games and through the game design process itself. Unlike the first STEM challenge, however, this year's contest will not accept ...

The phrase "educational gaming" is just slightly distasteful, summoning images of staid classroom typing tests. But as the unique power of games gains wider recognition in the 21st century, the opportunities for creative developers who want to make purposeful interactive entertainment is exploding. UK-based independent studio Preloaded has been around for 11 years, founded mainly to do design and graphics work for web clients. But its first commission was a Flash game, and close to ...