"Peter Panic" and "Cognition" Secure Top Honors in Best Style and Best Mobile Game categories
Alumni from the NYU Game Center won first place in two out of six categories in the second annual Playcrafting ’16 Bit Awards, announced last month in New York City. James Marion’s Peter Panic, the first musical theater-themed mobile game developed in conjunction composer and NYU Tisch alumnus Ben Bonnema, took the category of Best Style. Cognition, created by
Eric Teo Kai Liang, Emma Wang Siyuan, Wen Shi, Alexander Feigenbaum, and Christopher McGinnis, won for best mobile game.
Any developer who has shown a game at a Playcrafting event in the calendar year is eligible for consideration for he Playcrafting ’16 Bit Awards, which were given out this year in New York and San Francisco. Playcrafting is a national organization devoted to creating active gaming communities through educational activities and events, with locations in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
In addition to the Best Style and Best Mobile Game categories, prizes were also awarded for Best Tabletop Game, Best Student Game, Best Virtual Reality Game, and Best PC/Console Game. The Playcrafting Game Changer award, recognizing an individual’s outstanding contribution to game design, was awarded to Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games.
“Though all developers are eligible for the Playcrafting ’16 Bit awards, Playcrafting primary focus has always been on up and coming developers,” said Dan Butchko, CEO and Founder of Playcrafting. “NYU Game Center is a key part of our community in NYC and we were excited to celebrate some of the games that have been made by students at the show.”
Cognition was also a finalist in the Brooklyn Innovation Awards’ Indie Video Game of the Year, along with Beglitched, which was developed by Game Center alumnus Alec Thomson and current Game Center student Jenny Jiao Hsia.
“We couldn’t be prouder of quality and diversity of the games our students and alumni are putting out into the world,” said Frank Lantz, director of the NYU Game Center. “Its wonderful to see them getting traction and recognition.”
The Game Center is the Department of Game Design at the Tisch School of the Arts. Its mission is to graduate the next generation of game designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and critics, and to advance the field of games by creating a context for advanced scholarship and groundbreaking work. The Game Center’s students, both undergraduates and graduates, are drawn from diverse disciplines including computer programming, visual art, sound and audio, animation, writing, and joined together by the central discipline of game design. They are located at MAGNET - NYU's interdisciplinary media and technology center in downtown Brooklyn. For more information, visit gamecenter.nyu.edu.