Champlain Gaming Students Awarded for Video Game and Land Summer Internships with Ubisoft, Montreal

MONTREAL, QC (04/16/2013)(readMedia)-- A group of senior game programming students traveled to Montreal last week to compete against top game programming schools in North America at Ubisoft's Academia Game Lab Competition. This competition gives university students the opportunity to create a 3D game prototype, pitch it to some of the biggest players in the industry and try to earn a spot on Ubisoft's paid summer internship program.

Champlain College was represented by a group of seniors that created a game as part of their senior capstone called, "Quibly Ball." https://www.facebook.com/QuiblyBall Games were to be under the theme of "Space: The Untamed Beast," and feature one visible main character with one physical challenge and one mental challenge, plus three types of hostile oppositions. The team who has developed Quibly Ball includes seniors Dave Mahoney, Kyle Killian, Harry Boltz III, Roy Baron, Travis Constantino, Xanth Veilleux, Andrew Auclair and Anthony Blake.

"We went up to Ubisoft in late fall of last year where we were given a tour and received a theme "Space: The Untamed Beast." At this time, we had already had our core mechanics nailed down and the game was well on its way to being something special," said Boltz. "But we really wanted to be in the competition, and to win, so we worded our mechanics in a way that during our pitch we expressed that we creatively played with the theme, but did not actually hit it on the head."

Students presented Quibly Ball on April 3, and after great feedback received five nominations in various categories. Announced on April 11, the Champlain College team took home awards for Best Technical Innovation, Best Presentation, and runner up for Best Game.

"So as soon as we had presented, we were waiting for the judges to really dig into us for our presentation about who-knows-what. For the two days of the competition, it seems that they had a lot to say about all of the games, and we expected to be no exception despite our super polished prototype, but the reaction was awesome," Boltz shared. "Across the board judges were impressed by our presentation, art direction, mechanic, design, and our game in general. The two comments that stuck with me were, 'You've taken a mechanic and idea (shooting) that has been so overly done by everyone, and you gave it a new spin, you made it fresh, and that's amazing.' and 'Well now that I have the mic, I guess I got to say something about what you did wrong'.... there was a 15 second silence, and then he passed the mic."

Watch a video of the game at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9DmPV16LWw

"I believe the key to success for the team was their commitment to the iterative process," said John Pile, Jr., assistant professor of Game Programming at Champlain College. "I know this is something that was pushed for by Professor Manley, their game design faculty advisor. In addition, lots of early play testing, and an outstanding programming team. I know programmer Anthony Blake has completely rewritten the codebase multiple times as they moved from prototype to production."

The objective of the annual contest is to offer the opportunity for at least two students per academic institution to participate in the Ubisoft Summer School; Blake, Boltz, and Killian were awarded placements in the summer program, an eight-week paid internship where team members will have the chance to fully develop the prototype presented during the contest with 33 other students. In the last two years Ubisoft has hired the majority of the participants of the summer program.

"The fact is, we need to recruit to survive," said Philippe Turp, director of institutional relations and the founder of Academia for Ubisoft. "This is our link with youth and our chance to train them."

Champlain students are excited to have the opportunity to work for Ubisoft, a leader in the gaming industry with successful titles like Assassin's Creed and Just Dance to its credit.

In 2012, seven Quebec universities took part in the Ubisoft Game Lab Competition. This year, Champlain College was one of 13 institutions from Quebec, Canada and the United States.

"The mission of Academia is to create opportunities to inspire the creative leaders of tomorrow. The high quality of the projects presented this year is a testament to the next generation's talent", said Turp.

"This is the tipping point for students about to leave school," said Alexis Jolis Desautels, head juror of the competition and a game designer for Ubisoft. "There's a lot of pressure to deliver an impressive prototype."

That was no exception for these Champlain seniors, but they had fun with it. "From the first day we had this super-fun mechanic that we really loved and enjoyed, but the art was just colored spheres, on a grey cylinder, and that was it," said Boltz. "To go the extra mile, we each recorded funny noises for the spheres when they shot, and it gave these little objects life, and so much character. We were having so much fun with just these primitive objects and sounds that we knew we were onto something interesting. So from day one the mission of our artistic direction was to never lose that feeling of fun we had, and the challenge became 'How do we make a world, and character that can be as much fun as weird little spheres with pew noises.'"

Boltz continued, "There are so many games out there with fun mechanics and interesting design, but what really takes a game to the next level is the relationship and interaction between the design of the game and the art that really pushes the aesthetic to an interesting zone. When you start making decisions weighted by 'what would make sense in this context' instead of 'what would be cool in this context' it pushes you to try to do both at once, and that's where I think the magic really happens. They say constraints breed creativity, and I think that's what makes a game really interesting."

Champlain College competed against teams from McGill University, Concordia University, the University of Utah, ACFA Multimédia, Établissement d'Enseignement Supérieur Technique Privé (ISTDS), Centre NAD, École de Technologie Supérieure, École nationale du jeu et des médias interactifs numériques (ENJMIN), École Polytechnique, HEC Montréal, the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and the University of Ontario - Institute of Technology.

About Academia

Academia is a series of programs and activities created by Ubisoft Montréal whose mission is to encourage the next generation of digital media experts by introducing and educating young people from age 12 to 25 to the video games trades and production methods through learning activities. More information can be found at http://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/video-games-jobs-my-career/academia/universitaire_18-25

For further information contact Steven Ross, Public Relations Manager at Ubisoft Montréal: Steven.ross@ubisoft.com

About Champlain College

Since 1878, Champlain College has provided career-focused education to students from its hilltop campus in Burlington, Vt. Champlain's distinctive educational approach embodies the notion that true learning only occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain offers traditional undergraduate and online undergraduate courses, along with online certificate and degree programs and eight master's degree programs. Champlain offers study abroad programs at its campuses in Montreal, Quebec and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain College will be included in the Princeton Review's "best colleges" guidebook, "The Best 377 Colleges: 2013 Edition." Champlain was named a "Top-Up-and-Coming School" by U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges" and was ranked in the top tier of 2013 Regional Colleges in the North. For more information, visit www.champlain.edu.