“I’ll be forever thankful for the opportunity the PA Scholarship has given me to attend USC, one of the world’s best game design curriculums,” said Gorman. “I’ve already been able work on several trial games including a board game called Spacewolves that I designed with some friends. Look out gamer community, I’m coming up!”

While at Hamilton College, Gorman was a computer science major and creative writing minor. Her biggest interests seem to be in the intersection of story telling and game design.

The annual PA scholarship, established in 2006, is available to university students interested in pursuing a career in the game industry. The winner is selected based on service, leadership, character, financial need and the potential to make a positive impact on the game industry.

“We’re grateful at how much the community has supported us over the years and being able to assist bright new talents like Kyla is one of the ways we try to give a little back,” said Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade. “Kyla shows the kind of passion and excitement for creating games that ensures the rest of us will have innovative titles to play in the future.”

Application information for the 2010 scholarship will be available in spring 2010.

Last year’s “Unlock Xbox” winner, Doritos Dash of Destruction, was downloaded nearly a million times, so while we endlessly poke fun at the contest, it is a way to get your skills recognised by a large chunk of the gaming community. Those who feel they have a game concept that merges cheese-flavoured corn chip and interactive entertainment in a way never-before-seen can visit www.unlockxbox.com from now until October 4 to submit a video of their idea. Ten quarter-finalists will be chosen to make their games reality. Two finalists will have their titles made into 2010 Xbox Live Arcade games, with one grand prize winner scoring a $US50,000 gaming consultant project from Doritos.

“We are always looking for new ways to connect with fans and give them unique opportunities to express their creativity in a way only Doritos and our partners can deliver,” said Ann Mukherjee, group vice president, marketing, Frito-Lay. “Many of the people who love Doritos also love gaming, and this innovative program gives our fans a chance to live their dreams.”

You heard the woman. Live your dreams.

The feature, Dramatic Play, analyses the intersection of interactive media, drama and games as well as the classic tenants of play and storytelling that make or break a video game. Dinehart says that Aristotle’s original notion of dramatic play — that’s interactive drama where you experience a story instead of just hearing about it — has bled into games like World of Warcraft, Dead Space and his own Company of Heroes.

These games seek to immerse the player in a dramatic role play, whereby they assume the role of character in a different time and place, and whose actions and presence having meaning in the world as designed.

Dramatic play is the new niche these games expound upon, a paradigm that is the focus of interactive narrative design, a craft that meets at the apex of ludology and narratology and conjoins the theories into functional video game development methodologies.

Heavy stuff, but very interesting — the kind of thing that would make an awesome dissertation topic in a Rhetoric Department at some research university. I mean if we’re all on the same page that games are interesting and important and worthy of respect, we have got to get more academics on the case. That, or clone people like Ian Bogost.

Dramatic Play [Gamasutra]

This weekend, Wild Pockets, Crispy Gamer and Microsoft are teaming up to host Bay Area Game Jam – a 24-hour game development competition at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, California.

Contestants have to use Wild Pockets’ 3D web-based game engine and the fine print on the contest rules specifies that this is a team event and every team must have at least one programmer on it. The grand price is $2,500 and to top it all off, contestants get to keep the IP (but not absolute distribution rights).

But the real draw, especially for the peanut gallery members of the gaming press is a Saturday night concert featuring the OneUps and Megas. I think this will be the “Jam” portion of the weekend.

Check out event details here.

Website Boing Boing checked out the 2009 Global Game Jam, which has participants from all over the world churn out a game in 48 hours.

Get a boots-on-the-ground view from LA, Pittsburgh, Australia, Scotland, Israel, Turkey and Venezuela. There are potato chips and pee drinking!

Check out the games here.

Our Networked Report from the 2009 Global Game Jam [Boing Boing]

Contestant on TV’s America’s Next Top Model, Asperger’s sufferer and rock climber Heather Kuzmich didn’t go from modeling to game design, but, as she puts it, from game design to modeling.

Kuzmich is currently enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Art, majoring in Video Game-Art design. “At first I wanted to get into costume design,” she says, “but that soon changed to game design, especially since I frigging love games and love doing weird designs for characters.”

How much does she love video games? She says that because of her “no video games whatsoever” is now included on the laundry list of things not allowed in the America’s Next Top Model house. She adds, “They now know that there are no makeup lines named Nintendo DS.”

People of Envy: Heather Kuzmich [Rahul Sood via GameCulture via Joystiq] [Pic]

While Fallout 3 is a resounding success, the game wasn’t without its flaws. Looking to the future of the Fallout franchise, Bethesda takes with them two very important lessons from their first attempt.

As part of an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Fallout 3 executive producer Todd Howard very briefly mentioned two important lessons he learned from making the game that he would carry with him as the franchise moves forward to Fallout 4 and beyond.

“Greatest lesson? Don’t let the game end, and don’t have a level cap,” said Howard.

Bingo! Spot on the nose, Todd. Xbox 360 and PC players are getting the ending removed and the level cap raised in the upcoming Broken Steel downloadable content pack, so I’d say Bethesda has learned those particular lessons rather well. Good show!

Bethesda’s Big Takeaways For ‘Fallout 4′ [MTV Multiplayer]

Square Enix has a formula and has it down pat. That’s not to say all Square Enix RPGs are the same — they’re not. However, they do share similarities in character design. Here’s why.

Yusuke Naora, who worked on The Last Remnant, explains, “The format of the RPG lends itself well to having a teenage protagonist. Usually you’re playing for many hours, taking a character on a journey from a relatively weak state to one of power and maturity, a gameplay journey that mirrors that of a teenager moving into adulthood.”

That’s not the only reason to have a young protagonist Naora says, but definitely one of the reasons. Don’t think Square Enix is doubt free about populating its titles with youngsters!

“We sometimes wonder what we’re doing dealing with such young protagonists in our games, characters who don’t necessarily speak to us as adults. There’s no pressure internally on how you have to make a character. But you do find that there’s an expectation of how a protagonist must look for Japanese gamers.”

Teenage Lead Characters Work Well in RPGs, Says Square Enix [Softpedia via Dtoid]

Mass Effect 2 is going to be at GDC! It’s going to be the topic of a dry, academic discussion, but still… Mass Effect 2! We’ll learn all sorts of things from this discussion, right?

Nope.

EA reps have told VG247:

This GDC event is an academic panel, but there won’t be any concrete information provided on the Mass Effect franchise other than what has been outlined on the GDC website.

And what’s outlined on the GDC website? Aside from the prospect of seeing a Mass Effect 2 level under construction, bugger-all, that’s what.

EA: No concrete information on Mass Effect 2 at GDC09 [VG247]

Valve’s team-based shooter Team Fortress 2 may have at least one more gameplay mode left in it, according to the developer’s Robin Walker. On top of that, a tenth class is in the works.

You’re just going to have to wait a while to see what that tenth class — previously teased in a Left 4 Dead Easter egg — might be, especially since Walker tells the Escapist: “We’ve got several new class designs floating around, some of which we like a lot.” Valve has to get the rest of the class updates — and those Xbox 360 version changes! — out first, with the Scout currently on deck for a revamp.

Even more changes are coming to TF2, according to Walker, including “some riskier, and hopefully more fun, design choices in the near future.” The last gameplay mode Valve added, “Payload,” was partially a result of fan requests, something Walker says the developer looks to for inspiration.

Walker dishes some heavy hints on what those might be — hello, massive Engineer changes — but you’ll have to read the entire interview to find out what they are.

Storming the Fortress [The Escapist]