Rob Mercer, the ICT Outreach – Project Officer for the Faculty of Information & Communication Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology has sent out the following information which may be of interest.

 I would like to announce that the SwinGame 09  games design competition is open again this year.  The competition ran for the first time last year and our senior academic staff from the Computer Science and Software Engineering academic area were impressed with the quality of the entries.  The winning games from last year can be seen at www.swingame.com 

This year’s competition now includes two different categories (Arcade and Open) to encourage all secondary school students to enter and participate (visit the website for category details).

Once again, the SwinGame.com website will have the following supporting programs and materials to help students:
–  The creation of Game Development Kits available in VB.NET, Delphi, Pascal, VB6 and C# to give students a range of tools and examples to assist in the creation of their game;
–  Sample games which include tutorials with videos on how to create games;
–  A forum where participants can ask questions, get help and post ideas about their games;
–  A teacher only forum for teachers to discuss ideas and ask questions.

Swingames poster

Similar to last year, the 2009 competition is:
– Free to enter
– Open to individual students and teams of up to three
– Open to all secondary school students in Australia

Prizes for the Arcade Category (team or individual):
1st Prize – $2,500
2nd Prize – $1,000
3rd Prize  – $500

Prizes for Open Category (team or individual):
1st prize – $1,000

The competition is currently open and entries must be submitted by 7 August 2009 (see website).  All entries will be judged by a panel of experts and winners will be announced on 16 August at Swinburne’s Open Day.  This is a good way to get students from your school excited about software and games development, which will hopefully encourage younger students to choose IT as a subject.

A class presentation is available for your students on the SwinGame 09 competition which can help them get started.  If you would like a Swinburne staff member to visit your class to present SwinGame, please contact me on the number/email below.

All information on the competition is available here:

If you have any questions feel free to contact Rob.