Chartboost University: School's Out

I am officially going through game developer withdrawal.Chartboost University (CBU) has come to a close. The student workspace is silent; empty. Not a sound from the lecture hall, apart from the occasional?ping-pong rally between engineers. But the knowledge shared and the friendships made here won't soon be forgotten.On October 11th, we welcomed 16 new faces to Chartboost HQ in San Francisco to kick off our special mobile game dev education program, Chartboost University. It was so exciting finally being able to meet and host the teams we'd selected out of the staggering number of applicants.?192 hours of lectures, office hours, workshops, and demos later, those sixteen developers walked the Chartboost stage to claim their diplomas in "Developer Awesomeness" with majors in "Kicking Ass". Hello to the CBU Class of Fall 2013.

For me, getting to know, inspire and work with our CBU devs over the past month has been, at the risk of sounding cliche, an incredibly amazing experience. We launched CBU to create a rich environment where devs could connect and be empowered to build hit titles. What we discovered at the end, is that CBU is also a place where developers experience life-changing moments. For some of our international teams, CBU was what got them on an airplane for the first time in their lives. Others had never left their home countries before. For our CBU Resident Advisors and faculty, myself included, we were able to get a clearer picture of how game developers think, understand what they care about and develop friendships with some very cool people.

I'd like to thank our amazing CBU faculty as well for volunteering their time to school and inspire our developers!Alex Lin, Founder at LVL6Brett Seyler, Co-Founder at Kerosene GamesBrandon Fischer, Lead Game Designer at Kerosene GamesChelsea Howe, Senior Game Designer, TinyCoChris Haire, Founder at KuvetClive Downie, former CEO at DeNADan Droller, Evangelist at ChartboostDan "Shoe" Hsu, Editor-in-Chief at GamesBeatJoe Wagner, Community at SupercellKenneth Ballenegger, Architect at ChartboostKieran Barr, VP of Business Development at DistimoMaria Alegre, Co-Founder & CEO at ChartboostNate Barker, Evangelist at ChartboostShmuel Tennenhaus, Director of Brand Outreach, Big Fish GamesRoger Royce, Producer at DeNASarah Fuchs, Head of Culture and Communications at DeNASteve Abeyta, Art Director at DeNA

School might be out, but the learning continues online. We want every indie developer out there to be inspired and build great games - that's why we'll be blogging and posting video of each of the lectures over the next few weeks. Check out TinyCo's lecture on Sustainable Game Systems, Chartboost's lecture on Piracy and Security and GamesBeat's lecture on Pitching to the Press.You can also continue to follow our updates on our Facebook and Twitter page as well. Tweet/FB #GameDevWithdrawal and you may just find me.Cheers and Dev Love,Stephanie