Media Room - Press Releases - 2007

BreakAway speaks at Digital Entertainment Conference

UMBC will hold the second annual Digital Entertainment Conference on Saturday April 28th on the UMBC Campus. The event is free and open to the public and will include presentations from game producers, artists and software engineering from Maryland companies. It will be of special interest to current and prospective students who are interested in careers involving game development, computer graphics, animation and interactive media.

DEC 2007 take place from 10:30am to 5:30pm in Lecture Hall 5 of the UMBC Engineering and Computer Science Building. The seven speakers are all from game companies in the Baltimore area, and include:

* Dave Inscore (Art Director, Big Huge Games)
* Katie Hirsch (Artist/Programmer, Breakaway Games)
* Ryan McFall (Engineer, Day 1 Studios)
* Dominic Cerquetti (Engineer, Firaxis Games)
* Don Goddard (Technical Director, Breakaway Games)
* Barry Caudill (Executive Producer, Firaxis Games)
* Matt Udvari (Designer, Day 1 Studios)

The DEC conference is sponsored by the UMBC Game Developers Club, a large and active organization comprised of students from the arts, computer science and other areas with an interest in designing and developing computer games. Each year the club works as a team to design, develop and implement a computer game with the same tools and techniques used in industry.

For more information on DEC 2007, including the full list of speakers, visit http://www.umbcgdc.org/dec. For information on other events involving games, animation and interactive media, see (or better, subscribe to) the GAIM Blog at http://gaim.umbc.edu/news/.

The computer game industry has become big business. The Washington Business Journal ranks the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area third in the number of computer game companies nationally, with high starting salaries for software engineers, programmers and artists. Based on employer feedback, UMBC is developing a new game development track as an option for students pursuing a B.S. degree in Computer Science, and a concentration in animation and interactive media for students pursuing a B.A. degree in Visual Arts. Highlights include

* Required classes applicable to games
* Preparation for a career in the game industry
* Combined programmer + artist senior project
* Join track by your Junior year

For information on UMBC's programs on games, animation and interactive media, see http://gaim.umbc.edu or contact Professor Marc Olano at gaim@cs.umbc.edu.