New York, New York – VoxPop Games, Inc., the independent games development platform, today announced the creation of a new career readiness program, designed to help college students break into the games industry. VoxPop Games revealed today its collaboration with Marist College, Bradley University, and Stony Brook University, and will expand to more colleges & universities in 2024.
Working as an extension of its existing network, students can use VoxPop’s platform to find job opportunities that pairs them with indie developers interested in utilizing students’ specific talents. Alternatively, students can also use the platform to build their own games and find skilled collaborators they need to finish their projects. One recent student-led project using the VoxPop platform was the highly-praised, Disaster Golf which launched on Steam for PC & Mac players and was developed by a team of four graduates of Bradley University. Once a game launches, all collaborators are paid automatically via the VoxPop profit sharing middleware platform application that divides profits based on the shares issued to each person. VoxPop actively provides strategic counseling, production and content analysis to its students and developers, this ranges from anything like, localization and licensing to providing direct access to publish games on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
The real kicker? VoxPop Games is not simply targeting students who are already looking to become full-on game designers, but those coming from all sorts of majors. By partnering with different university humanities departments to create crossover and thus greater opportunity for a future career in the video game industry.
“Overall there is a major shift away from communications type studies and towards STEM-oriented degrees. Video games need more than just engineers to build them into full products!” said Marc Anthony Rodriguez, COO of VoxPop Games, who himself graduated from Stony Brook University as a philosophy major in 2005. “Video games need artists, animators, localizers, producers and storytellers. Our mission is to go to various non-STEM students and fledgling developers and tell them, ‘Hey! There’s a space here for you here, and we can help you take a hold of it!’”
Rodriguez explained that the idea began with his alma mater’s minor: the Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS) department at Stony Brook University.
"I’m thrilled that a Latino alum of Stony Brook has established the beginnings of a partnership, and a work experience pipeline, that will expose students to creative opportunities and professional responsibilities even before they graduate. LACS looks forward to our undergraduate degree minors taking part in future years of this collaboration." noted Dr. Lori Flores, PHD, associate professor in the Stony Brook University Department of History and Director of the LACS center.
While many traditional STEM fields may overlook a program like this, Rodriguez explained that he sees it as a great source of writers, historians and localizers. More than that, he explained, he is thankful for a chance to give back and build with these hungry creatives. “I went from SBU LACS to Rockstar, Capcom, and Disney,” said Rodriguez, “and I can’t wait to show these new soon to be devs all the exciting opportunities they never thought were available to them.”