Northeastern participates in WTIA’s TechNW: North to Innovation 2012

The Northeastern team had an active presence at this major annual gathering of the northwest tech community, hosted by the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA). Over 350 attendees networked and heard presentations on Next Generation Ecommerce, early stage and growth stage venture capital experts and Big Data analytics. Northeastern Seattle Dean Washburn introduced a panel of gaming experts (CEOs of Big Fish Games, Bungie and Harebrainer) on the latest developments in the Gaming industry. The Gaming sector is a thriving hub in this region, with over 350 companies and over $4 billion in revenue. The gaming discussion covered the exponential growth in use of mobile devices (for Big Fish Games it went from 3% to 25% of its sales in one year), the increased use of the Cloud, the advent of “freemium” or free to play gaming devices and the future use of consoles.

Dean Washburn at WTIA’s TechNW 2012 conference.
Photo: John Cook

Northeastern is very active in the Gaming area. Many colleges at Northeastern’s Boston campus are engaged in a cross-disciplinary approach which includes Media and the Arts, Immersive Storytelling, Game Planning, Programming and Computation, Image Creation, Game and Interactive Media Hardware, Behavior, Applications, and related business and legal issues. Recent public products include Magy Seli El Nasr’s Lab: Games User Experience and Research lab , and a “serious gaming” STEM product, STEM brochure.

Contact Dean Washburn at [email protected] to learn more about our Gaming areas of excellence and how you can get involved with researchers or the academic programs in this growing field.  Game on!