GRID Lab students and faculty to present at major regional gaming convention

Students demonstrate walkable VR at the 2019 XR Showcase
Students demonstrate walkable VR at the 2019 XR Showcase in Scripps Hall on the Athens campus
October 8, 2019

Students and faculty from the Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab in the J. Warren McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies will present and compete at the 2019 GDEX in Columbus, Ohio, October 11-13. In all, ten students will travel to Columbus for the expo, where they will present on topics including Esports, “walkable VR,” storytelling, and user interface design, and enter three walkable VR games in competition.  In addition, 25 students from the Scripps College of Communication will attend the expo to learn and participate in the weekend’s events.

“I am so proud of the hard work and discipline shown by our students,” said John Bowditch, director of the GRID Lab.  “These developed VR experiences and research projects were created this year.”

Bowditch also noted that all of the presentations and panels proposed by Ohio University students and faculty were selected to be included in the expo.

The GRID Lab and its students have a history of success at GDEX, which is the largest gaming expo in the Midwest. At the 2018 event, games and animation major Will Gray won Best in Show for AR/VR and the Playvue Crowd Favorite award for his walkable VR experience, “Atlas.”

Now a senior at OHIO, Gray will return to the expo this year. Along with senior Honors Tutorial College VR/AR majors Reilly Zink and Alyssa Stahl and senior games and animation major Mitch Cook, Gray will present a session titled “Walkable VR: The Future of Immersion.”

Other presenters from the GRID Lab and across the University are listed below.

  • Kellye Blosser, MFA candidate in Communication Media Arts, will present “Thinking Beyond the Stories we’ve Always Told.”
  • Daniel Warmke, PhD candidate in Media Arts and Studies, will present “Emergent Gameplay: 35 Years of Complex Gameplay from Simple Rules in Nintendo Games”
  • Reilly Zink will present a second session titled “User Interface Design: Adapting to VR”
  • Faculty members Dr. Jeff Kuhn (GRID Lab and Office of Instructional Innovation) and Kristofer Meyeres (College of Business) and senior Ivy O’Shaughnessy (games and animation) will present the session “OHIO Bobcat Esports: Nothing to Something”

Learn more about GDEX. Students, faculty and staff affiliated with Ohio University who would like to attend can use the promo code: ougames to save 20% tickets.