On Thursday, December 7th, 2023, the UT Game Development and Design (GDAD) Program hosted its semesterly Digital Demo Day event. The showcase highlighted the work of hundreds of students from The University of Texas at Austin’s Arts and Entertainment Technologies (AET), Computer Science (CS), and Radio-Television-Film (RTF) departments to fellow students and industry professionals.
Students represented a variety of classes on campus and showcased a myriad of projects, from 2D Godot games from CS’s Elements of Mobile Computing course, animations from RTF’s Digital Media Production and Introduction to Two-Dimensional Animation courses, and completed ready-to-play games developed by students in the 2D Game Development Capstone course. Alongside those projects and so many more, AET unveiled the new Lab for Immersive Media featuring performances by graduates from UT’s Department of Theatre and Dance.
Throughout Digital Demo Day, students got the opportunity to interact with industry professionals from companies like Certain Affinity, Crystal Dynamics, GameSim, Monumental, Playable Worlds, and more, enabling them to develop professional connections with company representatives while showing off the hard work they’ve accomplished this semester.
A few of the dozens of fantastic student projects included video games like Zombeats, an apocalyptic high-octane rhythm game; Hacker’s Labyrinth (possibly the first and only MS Hololens stealth puzzle game ever created); PING, a space-action, physics-based, rogue-like penguin vs. fish shooter; Feral Frenzy Fighters, a networked fighting game that juxtaposes cute characters and gore in Godot; and Prometheus Unbound, a stealth-parkour platformer in a gothic-cyberpunk-horror environment.
“Our students are so talented in all of their disciplines,” commented Dr. Paul Toprac, head of the GDAD program. “We are thankful to the industry professionals who took the time out of their day to support them.”
Attending Digital Demo Day is a great way to encourage the newest generation of developers and leaders in the gaming, AR/VR, and creative media industries in both Texas and beyond. UT GDAD will be hosting its next Digital Demo Day on Thursday, May 2nd, 2024; if you are interested in attending or have any questions about Digital Demo Day, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Paul Toprac at topcat@cs.utexas.edu.
The Game Development and Design (GDAD) Program at The University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program between the Arts and Entertainment Technologies, Computer Science, and Radio-Television-Film departments. The program produces graduates ready to design, develop, and provide leadership for the exploding growth in the gaming, metaverse applications, and creative media studios in Texas and worldwide. For more information on the GDAD Program, please visit gamedev.utexas.edu.
