Joseph Spradley

At our meeting last week, MEGA held Executive Board elections. The five leadership positions will be filled by a mix of Interactive Media and Computer Science students. Please help me congratulate the new team that I know will take this club to the next level.

President- Jared Greiner
Vice President - Gabriel Deyerle
Secretary - Michaela Morris
Treasurer - Mihir Sheth
Development Director - Rowan Belden-Clifford

We have two more meetings this semester. They will be on Friday April 24th and May 1st, in SCA 214 at 5pm. We are also planning on taking a field trip to either Activision or a Burbank game voice recording studio during stop days. This trip will only be open to MEGA members.

The good news is that anyone can become a MEGA member by completing our census. You will get access to our database of game developers and if completed today, you have the chance to win a free EA game of your choice!
Click here to complete the MEGA Census now

April 24th **Today**
Round Table and Raffle
+We are giving away a free game
+Jared is presenting a CTIN class Post-Mortem
+Jordan is deconstructing Noby-Noby Boy

May 1st **Last Meeting**
Special Guest Ian Dallas
+Ian is coming to talk about his IGF Finalist game The Unfinished Swan

The GDC IGF award winning Reflection team is play testing their latest build this Wednesday and Friday. We are looking for players of all experience levels to come play the game and give their feedback. Now is your chance to help polish a great USC developed game for the Nintendo DS. If you are interested please fill out this survey and we will contact you shortly.
Short Sign Up Survey

Reflection DS GDC 2009 Attract Loop from Hersh (Reflection) on Vimeo.

This week Chris Swain will be giving his GDC talk on Game Metrics. We are also nominating people for the executive board elections being held later this month.

++Plus Member Generated Content++
MadWorld Deconstruction
CTIN 488 Project Post-Mortem
Flash Workshop

Come to SCA 214 @4pm, enjoy some free GooGoos and have a MEGA Friday!
MEGA Facebook

We are having our first MEGA meeting of the month this Friday, April 3rd from 5-6:30pm, in the new Cinema building (SCA 214) . Keith Co, the co-creator of the GDC IGF Next Great Mobile Game Reflection, will be our special guest. Our main discussion will be focused on submitting to independent games festivals. Specifically we will be talking about the upcoming festival Indiecade, an independent traveling showcase for games. MEGA is here to help give your game the best shot to getting selected. After our main discussion we will break into small focus groups and either playtest and brainstorm ideas that are member generated. The festival submission deadline is April 30th so if you are planning to submit anything, please come prepared with issues you have regarding mechanics, asset creation, polish, or the submission process. MEGA is going to devote the whole month of April to giving USC a strong showing this competition season!

Also we have new Announcements about:
-Activision Studio Tour
-Elections
-GDC
-DICE
-Our website
and much more!

++Bonus++
Unreal Workshop part 4
FREE Red Wagon Cookies!!!

My brother in Nashville heard this piece on NPR today about USC's game program. The five minute segment talks about how our program is expanding the industry and has interviews from Kellee Santiago, Jenova Chen, John Hight, and Tracy Fullerton. It is definitely worth a LISTEN

Be sure to stop by and support MEGA at the "School of Cinematic Arts Student Organizations Fair" from 11 to 2pm today in the new Lucas building courtyard!

EVENT INFO:
Each SCA student organization will have a booth with representatives in attendance to answer any questions, distribute information and discuss the goals, events and priorities of their programs. We strongly encourage all students to join us in discovering new and different organizations within our SCA community. Meet students with similar interests, extend the breadth of your relationships and explore all the opportunities available to you as Cinematic Arts student.

Attendees will include:

African American Cinema Society (AACS)
Delta Kappa Alpha [DKA]
Entertainment Industry Network [EIN]
Makers of Entertaining Games Association [MEGA]
Queer Cut
SCA Ambassadors
SCFX - USC Special Effects Organization
Southern California Business Film Festival (SCBFF)
Trojan Film Society
Trojan Vision
Women of Cinematic Arts (WCA)
ZDC

This Friday (3/6), the Makers of Entertaining Games Association is holding their weekly meeting from 5 to 6:30pm in the Interactive Media Lab (CSS G142). We are hosting two events with special guests from the IM Division as well as...

FREE Red Wagon COOKIES!!

To start off we hosting a live postmortem of KID THE WORLD SAVER!
The IGF finalist team is going to come do a presentation and Q/A on their game. Team members attending:
Michael Silverman- Project Lead
Hua Chen - Artist
Daniel Ponce - Artist
All of whom are first-year MFA students and represent the original core team.

Followed by the "Get an Internship! Why & How" Panel.
Have your questions answered about internships in the game industry. Drew Moxon (Riot), David Slagle (THQ) and Kendall Davis (Microsoft) will be here to give you their perspective on the importance of internships and their experiences with them. [Riot, THQ, and Microsoft recruit interns heavily from USC.]

Plus
+Jordan Limor might be there to talk about his trip to DICE with the AIAS
+Smash Brothers Tournament in Birkrant at 6:30
+Jared/Rowan should be doing the third Unreal Workshop at 7pm

It's gonna be a swell time!
RSVP Facebook Event

Download file

pizza ordering app. it is only the code logic and there are still some holes

The Inaugural Global Game Jam was a great success!

We are all winners because 38 people made 8 games in 48 hours but these are the ones we gave prizes too...

(Play all the games from USC and around the world at globalgamejam.org)

1st place - Furballs
Justin Lewis
Lisa Takehana
Joanna Zeta
Andrew Christensen
Karl Harns
Alex Fairman

2nd place - Microcosmic
Damon Stea
Ben Bharier
Asher Vollmer
Bob Lydecker

3rd - Syzygaia
Jonathan Carmel
Lindsey Talbot
Robert Nall
Carter Thomas
Christopher Cotta

and here is the winner for my favorite Interactive Media related Super Bowl add...

Today at 5pm the Makers of Entertaining Games Association, with the help of the USC Interactive Media Division, will kickoff the 1st Annual Global Game Jam.

A mix of 30 student and professional participants will break into teams and spend the next 48 hours competing against the rest of the world (1,750 developers total!) to develop a game with the following constraints:

1. A complete play session must always last 5 minutes or less.
2. The theme of the game should be: "As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems."
3. Choose ONE of the following adjectives to incorporate in your game (each team chooses which one to use): thin, evolved, or rotating.

We will be jamming all weekend in the IML so please stop by and check out the games.
To get the full rundown and live video feeds from the 54 locations around the globe go to globalgamejam.org