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Narbacular Drop
''Narbacular Drop'' is a 2005 puzzle-platform game developed by Nuclear Monkey Software. It was the senior game project of students attending DigiPen Institute of Technology. The gameplay consists of navigating a dungeon using an innovative portal system. The player controls two interconnected portals that can be placed on any non-metallic surface (wall, ceiling, or floor). Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve, took interest in the team's work and employed the whole staff at Valve. The developers went on to write the critically acclaimed ''Portal'' using many of the same concepts. The word ''Narbacular'', which does not exist in any dictionary, was chosen primarily to aid in internet search engine results.''PC Zone'' #187, Dec 2007 Gameplay While ''Narbacular Drop'' features a 3D world reminiscent of such first-person shooters as '' Quake'', the unique portal element and the character's lack of a jump ability makes navigation and puzzle-solving very unconventional. The play ...
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DigiPen Institute Of Technology
DigiPen Institute of Technology is a private, for-profit university in Redmond, Washington. It also has campuses in Singapore and Bilbao, Spain. DigiPen offers bachelor's and master's degree programs in Computer Science, Animation, Video Game Development, Game Design, Sound Design, and Computer Engineering. DigiPen also offers summer programs for students in grades K-12, online courses and year-long high school programs. History In 1988, DigiPen was founded by Claude Comair in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as a research and development institute for computer science and animation. Comair continues to be the President and CEO to the present day. In 1990, DigiPen began offering its first dedicated educational program in the subject of 3D computer animation through the Vancouver Film School. In 1990, DigiPen began offering a 3D animation program and began collaborating with Nintendo of America to create a post-secondary program for video game programming. With Nintendo's ...
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Independent Games Festival
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media,About the IGF
, www.IGF.com.
later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition. The IGF competition awards a total of $50,000 in prizes to independent developers in Main Competition and Student Competition categories, and held around the same time as the Game Developers Choice Awards event. From 2007 to 2010 there was a separate event called IGF Mobile for mobile phone games.


Competition Structure

The festival awards ceremony is split into two broad categories: the main IGF competition and the IG ...
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Aperture Science Enrichment Center
The Half-Life (series), ''Half-Life'' video game series features many locations set in a dystopian future stemming from the events of the first game, Half-Life (video game), ''Half-Life''. These locations are used and referred to throughout the series. The locations, for the most part, are designed and modeled from real-world equivalent locations in Eastern Europe, but also include science fiction settings including the Black Mesa Research Facility, a labyrinthine subterranean research complex, and Xen, an alien dimension. ''Half-Life'' and expansions Black Mesa Research Facility The Black Mesa Research Facility (shortened to B.M.R.F) is the primary setting for ''Half-Life (video game), Half-Life'' and its three expansions: ''Half-Life: Opposing Force, Opposing Force'', ''Half-Life: Blue Shift, Blue Shift'', and ''Half-Life: Decay, Decay''. The base is a decommissioned Intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM Missile launch facility, launch complex at an undisclosed New Mexic ...
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GLaDOS
GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is a fictional artificial intelligence, artificially superintelligent computer, computer system from the video game series ''Portal (video game series), Portal''. GLaDOS later appeared in ''The Lab (video game), The Lab'' and ''Lego Dimensions''. The character was created by Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift and voiced by Ellen McLain. GLaDOS is responsible for testing and maintenance in the Locations of Half-Life#Aperture Science Laboratories, Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center in all titles. While GLaDOS initially appears in the first game to simply be a voice that guides the player, her words and actions become increasingly malicious as she makes her intentions clear. The second game, as well as the Valve-created comic ''Lab Rat'', reveals that she was mistreated by the scientists and used a neurotoxin to kill the scientists in the laboratory before the events of the first ''Portal''. She is apparently destroyed at the ...
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Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' of Oxford University Press defines artificial intelligence as: the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI applications include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (e.g., Tesla), automated decision-making and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go). ...
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Chell (Portal)
Chell is the silent protagonist in the ''Portal'' video game series developed by Valve. She appears in both ''Portal'' and ''Portal 2'' as the main player character and as a supporting character in some other video games. Not much is known about Chell but some posit she is the daughter of an employee at Aperture Science Laboratories, the main setting of the games. Chell's face- and body-model were derived from those of Alésia Glidewell. She experienced a redesign in ''Portal 2'' which was often changed during development. For example, the original redesign featured a laboratory-hat. A character presented in first-person perspective, Chell can only be seen through reflections and portals in the game. Chell was generally well-received by critics and gamers, with many people praising that she does not speak and looks like a "normal-looking and normal-dressing woman" in contrast to many other female characters in first-person shooters. Development and design Valve's Erik Wolpaw f ...
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Silent Protagonist
In video games, a silent protagonist is a player character who lacks any dialogue for the entire duration of a game, with the possible exception of occasional interjections or short phrases. In some games, especially visual novels, this may extend to protagonists who have dialogue, but no voice acting like all other non-player characters. A silent protagonist may be employed to lend a sense of mystery or uncertainty of identity to the gameplay, or to help the player identify better with them. Silent protagonists may also be anonymous. Not all silent protagonists are necessarily mute or do not speak to other characters; they may simply not produce any dialogue audible to the player. Origin The earliest player characters in video games of the 1980s, including the likes of Mario, '' Metroid''s Samus, and ''The Legend of Zelda''s Link, were silent protagonists. Characters such as these may occasionally speak through text or audible words, but are otherwise limited to making gestures, ...
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Player Character
A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not controlled by a player are called non-player characters (NPCs). The actions of non-player characters are typically handled by the game itself in video games, or according to rules followed by a gamemaster refereeing tabletop role-playing games. The player character functions as a fictional, alternate body for the player controlling the character. Video games typically have one player character for each person playing the game. Some games, such as multiplayer online battle arena, hero shooter, and fighting games, offer a group of player characters for the player to choose from, allowing the player to control one of them at a time. Where more than one player character is available, the characters may have distinctive abilities and differing styles ...
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The Seattle Times
''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington (state), Washington state and the Pacific Northwest region. The Seattle Times Company, which is owned by the Blethen family, holds 50.5% of the paper. McClatchy company owns 49.5% of the paper. ''The Seattle Times'' had a longstanding rivalry with the ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' newspaper until the latter ceased publication in 2009. Copies are sold at $2 daily in King & adjacent counties (except Island, Thurston & other WA counties, $2.5) or $3 Sundays/Thanksgiving Day (except Island, Thurston & other WA counties, $4). Prices are higher outside Washington state. History ''The Seattle Times'' originated as the ''Seattle Press-Times'', a four-page newspaper founded in 1891 with a daily Newspaper circulation, circulation of 3,500, which M ...
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Robin Walker (game Designer)
Robin Walker (born 1975/1976) is an Australian video game designer best known for co-developing ''Quake Team Fortress'', ''Team Fortress Classic'', ''Team Fortress 2'', and '' Half-Life: Alyx''. Career Walker attended RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Together with John Cook and Ian Caughley, Walker started working on ''Team Fortress'' as a mod for id Software's ''QuakeWorld'' in 1996. Due to the popularity of the product, the team was hired by the then-small Valve to work on ''Team Fortress Classic'' and later on ''Team Fortress 2''. Walker has played development roles in various Valve games, including ''Half-Life 2'' and ''Dota 2''. More recently, Walker has been focused on the collision of economics and game design, in an attempt to transform ''Team Fortress 2'' into a free-to-play, microtransaction-based game. Walker worked on Valve's flagship virtual reality game, '' Half-Life: Alyx'', released on March 23, 2020. Influences and philosophy Walker has start ...
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Half-Life (series)
''Half-Life'' is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games developed and published by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles and storytelling. The original ''Half-Life,'' Valve's first product, was released in 1998 for Windows to critical and commercial success. Players control Gordon Freeman, a scientist who must survive an alien invasion. The innovative scripted sequences were influential on the FPS genre, and the game inspired numerous community-developed mods, including the multiplayer games ''Counter-Strike'' and ''Day of Defeat''. ''Half-Life'' was followed by the expansions ''Opposing Force'' (1999), ''Blue Shift'' (2001) and ''Decay'' (2001), developed by Gearbox Software. In 2004, Valve released ''Half-Life 2'' to further success, with a new setting and characters and physics-based gameplay. It was followed by the extra level ''Lost Coast'' (2005) and the episodic sequels '' Episode One'' (2006) and '' Episode Two'' (2007). The first game in the ''Port ...
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Edge (magazine)
''Edge'' is a multi-format video game magazine published by Future plc. It is a UK-based magazine and publishes 13 issues annually. The magazine was launched by Steve Jarratt. It has also released foreign editions in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. History The magazine was launched in October 1993 by Steve Jarratt, a long-time video games journalist who has launched several other magazines for Future. The artwork for the cover of the magazine's 100th issue was specially provided by Shigeru Miyamoto. The 200th issue was released in March 2009 with 200 different covers, each commemorating a single game; 199 variants were in general circulation, and one was exclusive to subscribers. Only 200 magazines were printed with each cover, sufficient to more than satisfy ''Edge''s circulation of 28,898. In October 2003, the then-editor of ''Edge'', João Diniz-Sanches, left the magazine along with deputy editor David McCarthy and other staff writers. After the ...
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