Best Student Game!!!

Awesome!!!

Cyber Heist won the Best Student Game award at I/ITSEC competition in Orlando! I've been here at the conference for the past 4 days working the booth, talking to people, and making a surprising amount of contacts in the serious games industry. I'm embarrassed to admit that I really had no idea that this entire sector of games development even existed, but the more I think about it the more I warm up to the idea. Good games help people, and serious games just do that more directly.

I suppose a lot of my aversion to serious games comes from funding. Idealogically, I'm not a big fan of government spending my money on things that it doesn't need to, and serious games seems to fall into that spectrum. Also, commercial games have to maintain excellence in order to financially succeed, where government grant games don't have to maintain even near that same level of quality. I think it's that extra-high standard that really draws me to commercial games, because everything HAS to be excellent or the product is a fail. I really like that kind of pressure.

After winning the award I walked around to talk to various companies who were looking for designers in the serious game space. By "walked around" I actually mean I was introduced to people via Jennifer McNamara, an insanely awesome producer who works for a company built out of what used to be Microprose in Maryland. I was pretty hesitant about jobs on the east coast because it stresses Janice out just to think about moving that far away, but after talking to Jennifer about the culture at her studio and how awesome and sincere she was while on her personal crusade to get me a job, I feel totally sold. They're looking for a designer to work creatively to solve problems given to them by their clients in ways that games don't typically do. Apparently, Jennifer likes to pull people who haven't had experience in the commercial sector because they aren't jaded and don't already have a specific approach.

I'm typically cautious about opportunities that sound too good to be true, but this gig really seems to have my name all over it. If the culture at BreakAway games is even half as cool as Jennifer was, I'm totally sold.