It is with great pleasure that we are able to announce the list of winners of the Scholarships to attend this year’s E3 event. As always, there were a great many applicants for our judges to choose amongst, and we are delighted to announce we have selected the 8 best who will be getting the Scholars experience in Los Angeles this year. They are:

• Oleg Brodskiy (Binghamton University, USA)
• Spencer Buchanan (University of Utah, USA)
• Brianne Christiansen (University of Utah, USA)
• Jacob Cramer (Iowa State University, USA)
• Edaleen Cruz (Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico)
• Josh Lee (University of Utah, USA)
• Erich Schuler (Southern Polytechnic State University, USA)
• Chelsea Southard (Berklee College of Music, USA)

Please join us in congratulating the E3 winners, and for those of you who would like to participate in the program this year at Casual Connect USA – the last of our North American Scholarships opportunities – the deadline for applications is May 20th.

In this guest post from a member of the 2013 Judging Panel, Chris Tihor addresses an issue that he (and many other judges) have noticed when evaluating Scholarship applications.

As one of the judges for the IGDA Scholars program, I spend a certain amount of time reviewing applications from students. By and large this is an inspiring experience: I get to see what great things the future wave of game creators are up to while they’re learning and developing their craft. But unfortunately there’s a downside to this process as well: many of the applications I’ve read aren’t living up to their potential. I see good applications that could be great applications. And, sadly, I see many applications that don’t represent their authors very positively at all. I hate to see it, because more often than not an awesome applicant is being dragged down by some simple mistakes that can be easily fixed.

One of the most obvious mistakes that I see revolves around the sections regarding volunteering. After reading a number of them, the impression I get is that students are unclear on what volunteering is, so I thought that I’d see what I can do to help. I’ll begin by giving you examples I’ve gleaned from actual applications that are definitely not volunteer work:

• Attending an IGDA Chapter/Game Dev group meeting – While fun and informative, this is not the same as volunteering.
• Working on your game – Another great learning experience, but not volunteering.
• Working on someone else’s game – See “Working on your game” above.
• Working on a game for a class project – This is more along the lines of education instead of volunteer work.
• Donating to a charity – Please do, but don’t call it volunteering.
• Participating at a charity event – Sure, it feels good to have fun while donating to a worthy cause, but it’s not volunteering.
• Working on an unpaid internship – Good for getting valuable experience, but not the same as a volunteer position.
• Buying indie games – Good for you! Indie games are worth your time and money, but that’s still not volunteering.
• Supporting crowdfunded projects – Also worth the effort, but also not volunteering.
• Beta testing a commercial game – A great way to witness how studios get a game to that last level of polish, but it’s not volunteering.
• Attending a game jam – one of my favorite ways to learn how to make games, but, you guessed it, not volunteering.
• Buying games instead of pirating them – not just a good idea, it’s the law. Also, it’s not volunteering.

There’s more, but I think you get the idea. Now that I’ve shot down all of these activities as not volunteering, you’re probably wondering what would actually count as volunteering. Here are a few suggestions:

• Helping out an IGDA Chapter/Game Dev group – Offer to help the organizers with a particular area or whatever needs doing (there’s always something that needs doing). If there’s no nearby group, start one yourself.
• Helping a charity – Donate your time and effort to help the charity raise money, reach its goals, and improve your community. There are plenty out there that could use your help. You might even be able to help them with your game dev related skills: making art for posters, fixing their computers, etc.
• Helping at local schools – Volunteer for an after-school program teaching kids programming, drawing, creative writing; wherever your skills lie.
• Helping at a conference – Most conferences are largely run by volunteers. Why not volunteer for one of your favorite ones? Not only do you tend to get a free pass to the event, you also get to meet the other awesome people who put it on and get a backstage view of how conferences are run.
• Helping the IGDA – We’re always looking for people who are willing to volunteer their time. Most of what gets done in the IGDA is through the help of our fantastic volunteers. Contact us and we’ll soon find something you can help with.

In summary, volunteering is about putting some of your time and effort into endeavors that help others more than they help you. It’s about actively participating in your community, local or international, public or professional, and making a change for the better for all. The great thing is that even though you’re helping others, you’re helping yourself at the same time. You’re building relationships, experiencing new things, and getting a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you’re making a difference in people’s lives. I know this firsthand: as a volunteer for my local IGDA chapter, as a volunteer for the IGDA Scholars program, and as a volunteer for the IGDA as a whole. In fact, I volunteered to write this article. I did so because I want to help students write better IGDA Scholar applications and help show the judges how awesome they really are. So if this piece helps even one person to do so, then it will make the effort all worthwhile.

Chris Tihor is a writer, narrative designer, creator of comics, and organizer of IGDA Victoria. He’s also the creative dynamo behind Ironic Iconic Studios. You can check out some of his work at http://www.ironiciconicstudios.com/.

Today we are very pleased to announce the winners of the IGDA Scholarships to attend GDC 2013. Our judges combed through almost 200 applicants, from well over 100 universities and colleges in order to select what we feel represents the very best of  the upcoming talent, and the brightest, most engaged students. After extensive deliberation, the following people have been chosen as IGDA Scholars:

• Rose Abernathy (Haverford College, USA)
• Matthew Dyet (Edith Cowan University, Australia)
• Isabelle Gramp (Adelaide University, Australia)
• Michelle Hill (Academy of Art University, USA)
• Yngvill Hopen (University of Teesside, UK)
• Jukka Laakso (Turku University, Finland)
• Justin Lara (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Harry Lee (Monash University, Australia)
• Michael Lin (University of Southern California, USA)
• Chris Mathews (Savannah College of Art and Design, USA)
• Carlos Christian Muriel (USC School of Cinematic Arts, USA)
• Brittany Oswald (Iowa State University, USA)
• David Parker (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
• Bryan Ploof (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Jorge Espiridiones Riquelme Cucoch-Petraello (Instituto Profesional ARCOS, Chile)
• Emanuel Rosu (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA)
• Thomas Rousse (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Timea Tabori (University of Abertay Dundee, UK)
• Drew Utterback (University of South Dakota, USA)
• Evan Yovaisis (Academy of Art University, USA)
• Alexander Zook (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Please join us in congratulating all our new Scholars who will be joining the previously announced winner of the Eric Dybsand Memorial AI Scholarship, Owen Macindoe, for what will hopefully be a very memorable experience with the IGDA at this year’s Game Developers Conference.

The Eric Dybsand Memorial AI Scholarship is awarded by the IGDA Foundation each year to a promising student in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It commemorates Eric Dybsand, who was both a pillar of the game development community and a frequent fixture of the Game Developers Conference.

We are delighted to announce that this year the recipient of this award is MIT’s Owen Macindoe.

As a PhD student, Owen has already achieved a great deal of success, winning the Best Paper award at the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 2012 conference for his research on AI for sidekicks in games. He is also a regular in the Boston game developer scene, organising game jams locally and working on the expo floor at the Boston Festival of Indie Games.

As the Dysband winner for 2013, Owen can look forward to an intensive week of learning from some of the most knowledgeable AI experts in the field.

The Eric Dybsand Memorial AI Scholarship is awarded by the IGDA Foundation in collaboration with the AI Game Programmer Guild, and is selected independently from the remaining IGDA Scholarships. We’re hoping to announce the rest of the winners of GDC 2013 Scholarships before the end of the month, and as always we’re very grateful to our judges who are working away behind the scenes to make that possible, as well as to GDC themselves without whose generosity, the Scholarships would not be possible.

The call for applications for the IGDA 2013 GDC Scholarship program is now closed. We had almost 200 applications from students in 17 countries and they are all now in the hands of our new judging panel.

We’re now on the search for mentors so that once our judges have picked the best of the best we can get to matching them with an equally awesome industry veteran to help guide them through the conference! You can learn more about being a mentor andhow to apply here.

We’d like to again thank GDC, our judges, and future mentors, sponsors, and studio hosts for help making this possible. If you’d like to help get involved in this wonderful program please email scholarships@igda.org.

We’re looking forward to the first of many excellent scholar events in 2013!
IGDA Scholarships Committee