FrostRunner Takes 3rd for Best Gameplay, 7th Consecutive Guildhall Win in the Competition's 6 Years Running
PLANO, TEXAS — March 22, 2019 — SMU Guildhall continues its legacy of success with another award from the Intel University Games Showcase, part of the annual Game Developers Conference that takes place each Spring in San Francisco, Calif. This year's winning Guildhall submission was Cohort 27's speedrunning platform game, FrostRunner, which received a third place trophy for Best Gameplay. 2019 marks the sixth year for the IUGS, and SMU Guildhall is the only institution to have won every year since it began.
SMU Guildhall attends the Game Developers Conference each year, bringing along one of its top student games to compete in the Intel Showcase against a number of other game development institutions. This year's IUGS submission, FrostRunner, made news in early 2019 as a viral hit amongst the speedrunner community, rapidly gaining over 135,000 downloads in its short time on Steam and still growing. The IUGS is the first competition that the game and development team, Think Arcade, have participated in since its flourishing online launch.
To kick off the Intel event, two dozen specially selected universities demonstrated their top student games at the Intel University Games Expo. The best games in the Expo would go on to join nine qualifying university teams to participate in the Showcase later that day. In the Showcase, these 12-14 teams have only five minutes to present their game to a panel of luminary judges and both in-person and online streaming audiences. They must showcase their gameplay, visual quality, and innovation in hopes of winning in one of three categories — Best Gameplay, Best Visual Quality, and Innovation.
This year's prizes included $40,000 in hardware prizes from Intel, a one-year Unity Pro license for 1st place winners, and a one-year Houdini Indie license from SideFX for all prize winners.
The first IUGS took place in 2014. That year, SMU Guildhall swept the competition, which at the time had only two categories. Since then, Guildhall student teams have continued to successfully demonstrate the top level quality of our games by not only placing every year, but winning significantly more awards than any other school.
- 2014: 1st Place Best Overall Gameplay; 1st Place Best Overall Visual Quality
- 2015: 3rd Place Best Overall Gameplay
- 2016: 1st Place Best Overall Visual Quality
- 2017: 2nd Place Best Overall Gameplay
- 2018: 3rd Place Best Overall Gameplay
- 2019: 3rd Place Best Overall Gameplay
Watch the 2019 IUGS Replay
Play FrostRunner on Steam
About SMU Guildhall
Since its genesis, SMU Guildhall has set the bar in game development education. Recognized as one of the best game design graduate programs in the world, SMU Guildhall works collaboratively across disciplines and industries to train the next generation of game developers. It’s long held a seat in the Top 10 rankings for game development programs across the world by the Princeton Review, sitting at Number 1 for the past two years. In addition to its Team Game Production curriculum, the Guildhall has been commended for the high quality of its faculty of industry veterans and professionals as well as its career services achievements. The program has graduated over 770 alumni, who now work at more than 270 video game studios and tech companies around the world. The program’s achievements can also be seen in its high-caliber game successes including record breaking downloads, awards, and contest wins. SMU Guildhall offers both a Master of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development degree and a Professional Certificate of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development, and it is the only program to offer specializations in all four cornerstones of game development — Art, Design, Production, and Programming. For more information, visit guildhall.smu.edu.