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Five Professorships vacant at CGL!

We are extremely happy to announce the opening of a series of faculty job vacancies including W2-professorships in ‘Game Design’, ‘Economics and Entrepreneurship for Games’, ‘Game Informatics’, ‘Sound Design for Games’ and ’3D Animation and CG Art for Games’.


The increase of  faculty, staff and student body at CGL is based on the Cologne University of Applied Sciences ongoing expansion in the field of future technologies and social innovation. In this context, CGL´s undergraduate program ‘Digital Games (B.A.)’ will grow to a projected number of 140 students within the next 3 years to then introduce a consecutive postgraduate ‘Digital Games (M.A.)’ in the winter term starting in early 2018, making the institute the largest provider of game design study programs at a public university in Germany.

The call for applications is open effective immediately and will close on Januar 29, 2015. For further information on the individual job profiles and the application process, please head over to the job section!

Endgame Author James Frey at CGL

 11/24/2014 - We had the pleasure to have James Frey visiting Cologne Game Lab, presenting his new transmedia project "Endgame" to arround 150 students and guests. "Endgame - the Calling" is the novel, released October this year, which is the cornerstone in a mixture of novels, movies and (mobile) games. The whule project is a collaboration between Frey, Google and Universal Pictures - the largest transmedia project of all times as James Frey mentioned!

Kurz und Schön Special Price for Onat Hekimoglu

This was my last project at Koeln International School of Design befor switching completely to Cologne Game Lab! The WDR special price was ours the second time in a row! Just because we have great talent and hard workers at the university! Congratulations Onat for this prestiguoues award!

Laudation Kyle Cooper

I had the pleasure to present the laudation on Kyle Cooper during the 16th Eyes & Ears Awards 2014 in Munich!

 

>> His main subject is the film title, a field that has certain rules and by definition specific duties. Alongside the movie´s title and the director´s name, it lists the names of the actors in a hierarchical order and guides the audience into the scenario of the movie. But what started as static typographic plates in the early days of film, evolved into a stand-alone art form. Still being on the “periphery of film” as designer David Peters mentioned, titles developed their individual role in filmmaking with a strong will for aesthetical and technical experimentation and innovation.<<

 

REVOLUTION - Die Wissenshow zur digitalen Gesellschaft

10/16/2014 - 19.00h Wird die Welt zum Spiel? Games als neues Leitmedium.

Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Ubierring 40, 50678 Cologne

Entrance Free.

The digital society is a society in transformation. Digital technologies play an important role in our everyday lives and provide us with a whole range of new options. Science Year 2014 "The Digital Society" shows how research can produce new solutions to promote this development and focuses on the impact of the digital revolution.

 

...check out the recorded show!

Pwc Whitepaper "Die Zukunft der Spielkonsole: Allrounder im Wohnzimmer"

With "Ausbildung jenseits technischer Trends" (Education beyond technical Trends) i claimed a short statement explaining my perspective on game education. We should not follow short-dated trends but establish a broad cultural and creative knowledge base, that enables the students to contextualize their projects far beyond the field of digital games!

 

Subfuge, the Agent Nation

Since a year we are developing "Subfuge - the Agent Nation". The Highscore Brothers are Peter Bickhofe (CFO + Concept), Markus Hettlich (Frontend Development + Concept), Hans Bickhofe (Backend + Concept) and me (CEO + Concept). Subfuge is a location based game for iOs, Android and Windows Phone, funded by the Film & Media Board of Northrine Westfalia!

The mixed reality game features base building, spying and infiltrating enemy bases. A crafting tool allows to build up your base with all kind of protection and armory... Currentliy the first prototype is up and running - the closed beta will start late september. We are quite happy about Gamescom feedback, where we presented the game to potential partners. You can follow the project on Facebook!

"Outcasted" wins Games 4 Change Competition!

During my last semester n at Koeln international School of Design i conducted (together with Richard Jungkunz) and in cooperation with Cologe Game Lab a long term project in which we participated in the Games 4 Change Europe Competition 2013/14. More then 90 student projects from 13 countries have been submitted for the challenge that started spring 2013. Amongst the nine nominees were 3 projects from our surrounding - beside "Outcasted" Carmen Johann made it wit her "SuperOld Alfonso" as well as the gender-game "Pepper" from our G4C project!

"Outcasted" is a game about being homeless, sitting on the street and begging to the pedestrians. A quite tough experience, as the Oculus Rift VR Display emerses you impresively into the scene...

The impresive jury of Noah Falstein, Robin Hunicke, Alex McDowell, Brenda Romero, Gaël Seydoux, Saschka Unseld and Eric Zimmerman voted concordant for "Outcasted"! What a great result +  congrats to the team...

Child of Light

Kurzes Feature auf WDR5 - ein paar weise Worte von meiner Seite...
Kurzes Feature auf WDR5 - ein paar weise Worte von meiner Seite...

Child of Light wurde mit der Rayman Engine (UbiArt) realisiert und ist ein interessantes Märchen-Rollenspiel das dem Vorbild von JRPG´s folgt. Mann sollte unbedingt die Englische Version spielen - die Deutsche Übersetzung ist nicht so doll. Wirklich gelungen ist die visuelle Umsetzung - das ganze erinnert an Aquarellmalerei und auch die Animationen sind sehenswert. Summa Sumarum ein spannendes und mutiges Projekt aus dem Hause Ubisoft! (Das Feature findet ihr hier!)

KISD Infoclip Project

Image by Céleste Derycke
Image by Céleste Derycke

One of my last KISD projects! During WT 13/14 some of my students realized a project in cooperation with Cologne University of Applied Sciences Institut ITT. The strongly on research focused institute has a big demand for all kind of visualization of complex data. Most results are uploaded to VIMEO - you can find them nicely collected and presented in a KISD Bulletin article.

Game Developers Choice Award

Just voted for the Game Developers Choice Award. The winners will be presented during GDC 2014 in San Francisco! Due to the accreditation of our BA & MA in Digital Games at CGL we can not go this year.. Will see if i represented the developers opinion with my choice - gonna let you know...

Global Game Jam 2014

Setting up everything + being excited!
Setting up everything + being excited!

This year we had our GGJ 5th anniversary! We startet out in 2010 with about 25 jammers - a quite relaxed and overseeable event then... This year 117 jammers (!) crunched for 48 hours at the CGL location.  Due to the large numbers of developers we had to split the people into two different rooms, both equipped with LAN and Redbull (THX to our sponsor!).

CGL Alumni and "GoodEvil" Founder Marcus Bösch during the intermediate presentation...
CGL Alumni and "GoodEvil" Founder Marcus Bösch during the intermediate presentation...

Start of our Bachelor Program at CGL!

Winter term 2014/15 we will kick off with our new BA in Digital Games. The programm will be a consecutive 7 semester BA followed by a consecutive 3 semester MA in Digital Games. After two grounding terms the BA will offer specialization in Game Design, Game Arts and Game Informatics - all embeded in an academic fundament of media theory and the history of visual arts. The application procedure will start february 2014 aiming to identify the ideal 30-35 candidates for our BA kick off year!

 

Further information at the CGL website...