Rules & Regulations

Between 30 and 50 teams will submit a YouTube video promoting their game this year. Consider your promotional video as a "movie trailer" or "marketing pitch". Your video will be individually reviewed by a group of industry and academic personnel. They will rank each submission based on their perceptions of the game play experience of the product as demonstrated by the video. They will also look for potential issues such as the use of content without permission.

Only the ten highest-ranking submissions will be accepted for the final round of the competition. Your video needs to be engaging. It needs to clearly explain the strengths of the design and why it will appeal to your target audience.

It is expected that teams will modify their games after submitting the promotional video, but only one version may be submitted. Judges will not see the promotional videos. They will make their final judgments based on gameplay videos viewed during the event.

On the day of the event, teams will present their games via live stream or in person, at which time they will be required to demonstrate actual gameplay. Judges will then ask questions of the teams. Teams will have five minutes to answer questions.


Each team is required to download and fill out the Submission Form located here: GameSIGShowcase2024SubmissionForm_B.docx and email a PDF version of the file to our game submission email address gamesigshowcase@gmail.com.

This short document should include the following elements and must not use a font smaller than 9 point:

  • • Whether you will be attending live or via the Internet
  • • Division: Undergraduate, Post-Graduate or High School
  • • Game Name
  • • Team Name
  • • Title and one-sentence game description (“elevator pitch”)
  • • List of the team member names, graduation years, school names and majors
  • • Faculty member names, schools and contact information
  • • Game Engine
  • • Key features of the game
  • • One-paragraph summary of game play and objectives
  • • Youtube link to promotional video (3-5 minutes in length)
  • • Third-Party and ready made asset credits
  • • Up to five thumbnails of game art
  • • Two questions will need to be answered: what were the top techical challenges that you encountered in the project, and how did the design evolve during development (what changed and what didn't).

We're back in-person this year at Chapman University as well as online. Teams can join us at the Sandhu Center for the event or participate entirely online. This means that we'll have a mix of local students and others from around the country.

Also new for 2024 is our Post-Graduate Division. For the first time, we're accepting teams with members who already have college degrees or have had some industry experience. More details on the rules for this new division can be found in the FAQ section of this Web site or on the Submission Form. Welcome!

This year, we are leveraging our online format to give each team a chance to present their game in a "Game Room" during the judging portion of the event. You'll have at least one hour to demonstrate your game live to an audience and answer questions. Just check the box on the Submission Form and tell us a contact person with whom we can coordinate. This will give audience members a chance to learn more about all games in the event, even those that were not selected as finalists. Hint: this is also a great way to reach out to recruiters and potential internship coordinators who will be attending the event.



The 2024 GameSIG competition opened for submissions on April 7, 2024 and closed at 11:59 PM PDT on April 14, 2024. Submit forms to gamesigshowcase@gmail.com.

Actual game play for at least one game level must be demonstrated live during the event, which will be streamed via Discord and Twitch. Teams will have five minutes to show off their games, and then the judges will be given five minutes to provide questions and comments.




Judges 2024

Below are the judges for our 2024 event.

Shaene Siders

Shaene Siders is an IBM-certified computer geek who used to teach software and configuration management to people who make software. She’s also an award-winning action, science fiction, and fantasy writer. Never read her work without a helmet! She loves to see video games’ unique storytelling characteristics used in creative ways. You can find her writing on Cartoon Network’s Invincible Fight Girl, Marvel's Avengers Assemble, DC Super Hero Girls, and Niko and the Sword of Light. She also recently wrapped 5 seasons as Co-Creator, Head Writer, and Executive Producer for Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures. (The show had more explosions than you might think!)

William Fisher is the founder and president of Quicksilver Software, Inc. He has been in the game industry for 43 years, beginning as one of the original Mattel Intellivision programmers (the "Blue Sky Rangers"). Since then, he's developed games, educational software, military training systems, augmented reality and more. His company, Quicksilver Software, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

Some of his best known products are Interplay's Castles, Conquest of the New World and Star Trek: Starfleet Command. More recently, he's worked on and award-winning restaurant with iPads for ordering, a live poker game show in Las Vegas, and an anti-terrorist game for the Navy. He released a game for children with autism through his sister company SymPlay. Most recently, is active in a robotics startup.

Bill has been a member and leader in IEEE GameSIG since its inception, and currently chairs the GameSIG Showcase Executive Committee.

Bill Fisher

Brandii Grace

Brandii is Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Versus Gaming Network - a company making free tools to support game developers offering real-money tournaments in skill-based games. She has over 10 years in design and development experience in the games industry working with a wide array of platforms, genres, and markets for games ranging from giant MMOs to award winning indie titles.

Brandii is the Chair for the LA board of directors of the International Game Developers Association and in 2012 received the organization's top MVP award. She assisted the California Department of Education in creating a game design curriculum for high schools, been published in textbooks for games, and helped start several collegiate game programs.

When she isn't working, teaching, speaking, or gaming; you can catch her practicing her two favorite sports: parkour & figure skating.

Curtiss Murphy is the author of What Makes Great Managers Great. He’s a professor of Game Design at Laguna College of Art and Design. And he’s the VP of Engineering at MobilityWare, where his teams build some of the most played mobile games in the world. Curtiss has been around the block a few times. He’s done AAA, military, and Indy games.

Curtiss Murphy

Gabby Llanillo



Gabby Llanillo is a Quality Assurance manager with over 6 years of experience in the games industry. Most recently, she was a QA Supervisor at Riot Games on Valorant. She previously worked at Naughty Dog, Square Enix, and Idea Factory International on titles such as The Last of Us Part II, Dragon Quest XI, and Death end re;Quest. She is a Fowler School of Engineering alum and past IEEE GameSIG participant herself, graduating from Chapman with a BA in Computer Science and minor in Game Development Programming. Outside of her day job, Gabby has presented talks on empowering QA at various game dev conferences worldwide in hopes to improve treatment and recognition for the field, has provided mentorship through orgs such as WIGI, and continues to advocate for increasing diversity in both video games and the workplace.


In the 17 years since graduating Chapman, Vinnie has grown and evolved along with the game industry itself. Starting in Blizzard QA on StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm, he found his passion was in Engineering and Support systems and went on to drive automation testing for Hearthstone and help with Tools development for World of Warcraft. From there he took a big leap into cloud technology and Machine Learning at Disney Interactive and Consumer Products where he drove ML based monitoring of their cloud systems running both games like Emoji Blitz as well as the Shop Disney e-commerce platform. Using this experience, Vinnie then went to Google to work in their Customer Engagement team developing their in house support CMS as well as an early 1st party developer for Stadia. After 3 years though, the siren's call of games was too strong and he jumped to Niantic and worked on Pokemon Go as well as an 18+ experimental AR experience. Now Vinnie is the Engineering Lead at Bungie in charge of their Player Engagement Services tooling which provides real time personalized experiences for our players both in and out of game.

Vinnie Morrison

Matthew Perez



Matthew is a Senior Level Designer at Obsidian with a demonstrated background in developing areas and content for role playing games. He has recently moved into Survival Games with his newest project Grounded. Matthew was Lead Level Designer of The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon DLC, and Narrative Designer on Tyranny.







Event History

GameSIG was founded by Don V Black, PhD and William Fisher in the 1990s, together with other like-minded entrepreneurs who wanted to put together a venue where young, bright, creative students could present their video game development talents. They sought out the assistance of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a professional association formed in 1963 from the amalgamation of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers.

IEEE organization's scope of interest has expanded into so many related fields, that it is simply referred to by the letters I-E-E-E (pronounced Eye-triple-E). Today IEEE is the world's largest association of technical professionals with more than 423,000 members in over 160 countries around the world. Its objectives are the educational and technical advancement of electrical and electronic engineering, telecommunications, computer engineering and allied disciplines.

GameSIG, together with IEEE, now known as IEEE GameSIG, is one of (if not the) first home collegiate video game competitions and they are very enthusiastic supporters of diversity in game development. Further, it’s no secret that IEEE GameSIG competitors have an edge when applying for jobs. Completing a challenging independent project like a game – even if you don’t win and even if you’re not a finalist – shows that you have self-discipline and dedication to your profession. That’s exactly what today’s employers are looking for. In fact, a number of IEEE GameSIG competitors have gone on to land jobs with local game companies.



2020 LiveStream

    

2020 Results



2013 Recap Video