Cogswell College, a historic, 600-student educational institution offering a unique curriculum fusing Digital Art, Engineering and Entrepreneurship, will have two students from its Game Design & Development Program present a newly produced, school-developed mobile VR game during the 2015 SIGGRAPH Conference's "Appy Hour" showcase in Los Angeles (August 9-13).
Originally prototyped during the 2015 Global Game Jam by Cogswell students Christian Sasso and Steven Ulrich, "We Are Cubed" (WeR3) is the next evolution of 3D puzzle game. Sasso and Ulrich will demonstrate WeR3 during SIGGRAPH 2015's "Appy Hour," a cocktail reception where independent app developers can show their apps to the SIGGRAPH 2015 attendees. During this event, participants get feedback, cultivate new ideas, and make contacts to help move their efforts along. "Appy Hour" features new apps that use augmented reality, computational photography, image manipulation, location-based gaming, or anything someone can make a mobile device do.
In WeR3, each level presents players with a colored canvas they must recreate using their own colored avatar. Players must develop a strategy for moving their six-sided avatar across the landscape, as some faces of the avatar "paint" different colors. Developed in the Unity Game Engine using Google Cardboard technology, the game can be enjoyed as a standalone smartphone experience using touch controls or, much more interestingly, as a completely hands-free Virtual Reality experience. The Virtual Reality mode immerses the player within the game world, and the intuitive and easy to use controls take nothing away from the experience. For more information about WeR3, please visit http://myvirtualrealitygames.com
Regarding today's news, John Duhring, Director, Strategic Alliances and Alumni Relations with Cogswell College, said, "The acceptance by Siggraph of our students' new game 'WeR3' points to a critical note of differentiation about our school's approach. There is no doubt that conventional wisdom embraces the idea that exposure to research provides the best college experience. However, most colleges request that students graduate first before they are allowed to create experiments. Our students have the opportunity to paw through brand new technologies and generate their own experiences while they are still undergrads. I believe that our approach is more effective. Our results speak for themselves."
About COGSWELL COLLEGE
Designed as a "fiercely collaborative, living laboratory," Cogswell College is located in the heart of the legendary Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California. The school is a WASC accredited, four-year institution of higher education with a specialized curriculum that fuses digital arts, audio technology, game design, engineering and entrepreneurship. In 2015, Cogswell was cited by Animation Career Review as "One of the Top 50 Private Game Design Schools and Colleges in the U.S."
Numerous alumni of Cogswell College have secured prominent positions within the entertainment, videogame, technology, computer, animation, and motion graphics industries throughout California and beyond. Several of these alumni have established careers with such high profile companies as Activision, DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Electronic Arts, Pixar, and Microsoft Game Studio. Many other alumni have launched their own creative ventures.
Recent Cogswell alumni were members of the Academy Award®-winning production teams which worked on the blockbuster films "Frozen" and "Life of Pi." Some of the other well-known consumer projects to which Cogswell alumni have contributed include the feature films "Big Hero 6" and "The Avengers," and the popular videogames "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," "Halo 4" and "Battlefield Hardline."
Cogswell College is located at 1175 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, California, 94089. For more information, please call 1-800-264-7955 or visit: http://www.cogswell.edu/
