NOTABLES & NEWS
• As of Summer 2023 , SMU Guildhall has claimed a Top 10 ranking for 13 years in a row in The Princeton Review ’ s ranking of the world ’ s top graduate game design programs , including a multi-year # 1 ranking .
• Our alumni have worked at over 350 studios around the world on hundreds of titles , contributing on major titles from premier studios every year . Many of those titles are included in the pages of this report .
• Students and research teams at SMU Guildhall have won awards and competitions every year ; some of these past competitions have included : Game Developers ' Conference Game Narrative Review , Intel University Games Showcase , SMU Research Day , TechTitans Edge Computing Grand Challenge , Certain Affinity Portfolio Competition , MoMoCon Indie Game Competition , Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPrize , DICE Summit Intel Scholarship and Diversity Award and Randy Pausch Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Scholarship , SXSW Indie Gaming Competition , E3 College Game Competition , Red Bull Clash Course , HackTX , 20 over 20 Hackathon , Industry Giants Student Art and Animation Competition , GDC Online Narrative , Blizzard Entertainment ' s Student Art Contest , Indie Game Challenge , STEM Video Game Challenge , Independent Game Festival Competition , Intel Game Demo Contest , Texas Instruments DLP Products Next Generation Gaming Projectors Competition , and the Make Something Unreal “ Educational Category ”. Many works by both students and faculty have been featured in papers , publications , interviews , articles , and talks .
• Cohort 31 Capstone game Light of Alariya marked SMU Guildhall ' s first Unreal Engine 5 game ( in fact , one of the first games released on Unreal Engine 5 ). Launches of C31 ' s games on the Epic Games Store will also mark the first on this platform .
• In 2014 , SMU Guildhall began collaborating with SMU Meadows School of the Arts to create original music for our games . Today , this collaboration has grown into a successful endeavor in which students from Meadows ’ music , film sound design , and voice acting contribute to the music , sound , and voice acting on every SMU Guildhall TGP game . This includes live recordings of original compositions with the full SMU orchestra , access to professional-grade sound design and recording studios , tools , and equipment , and talented professors of practice who specialize in these subspecialties . In recent years , these soundtracks have been packaged and showcased as DLC for published games . The collaboration was taken to a new level in Fall 2022 when a $ 2,500 Engaged Learning grant enabled 32 musicians and a composer to participate in the first live orchestra recording session for Guildhall games . This collaboration produced the soundtracks for both C31 Capstone games and has directly led to the creation of an official video game music composition track that kicks off in the fall of 2024 .
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