• Computer Science
• About us
• Undergraduate study
• Postgraduate study
• International students
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• News and events
• Research
• Professional Development and Training
• Services for Business
• People Finder
• 50 years of Computer Science
• CS Staff Intranet
• Student Intranet
• Contact us

Students achieve success in games development competition

Posted on 25 April 2017

Two students from the Department of Computer Science have won, and come runner up, in a prestigious competition for students interested in entering the field of computer game development.

Alfred Norton, a third year student on the Masters in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence (MEng CS/AI), beat off stiff competition from around Europe to win the Rising Star code competition. Huw Talliss, a third year student on the Masters in Computer Science course, was a runner up in the same field for a game he produced entitled “Intersect”.

The competition is run annually by Grads in Games, a national initiative to improve the links between academia and the UK games industry. The initiative was launched in 2014 by Aardvark Swift, a games industry recruitment consultant who visited the University of York to give a talk about the scheme and how to get into the games design industry more generally.

The competition consists of three stages: a code test, a three week game creation phase and then an interview of five shortlisted entrants. The final interview stage was with top industry professionals and gave entrants the opportunity to network with representatives from several games design studios.

Alfred’s winning entry was a third person shooter game entitled “Capsule of Vengeance: A Bitter Pill for Cuboids”. The game involves simple geometric shapes, with cuboid shapes as enemies and capsule (or "pill") shapes representing the players.

As a result of winning the competition, Alfred received not only a trophy, branded clothing and goods from the games industry, but has since received the offer of an interview for a job on the strength of his work.

Alfred said: “If anyone is even slightly interested in game development I would definitely recommend they enter the competition. I would say this was probably a career-defining event for me, and I am delighted to have won.”