March 26, 2025

ArtCenter College of Design Students Win 2025 Independent Games Festival Alt.Ctrl.GDC Audience Award for Innovative Game, ChromaCorp

PASADENA, CA –ArtCenter College of Design is pleased to announce that ChromaCorp, created by students from the College’s Game Design program, has won the highly competitive alt.ctrl.GDC Audience Award at the 27th Annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards. The awards are part of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), held annually in San Francisco, which showcases and celebrates independent games and their creators. The prestigious alt.ctrl.GDC Award “honors the most engaging, intriguing, and well-executed game using unconventional, accessible or alternative physical controls.” ChromaCorp’s win marks the third consecutive year that ArtCenter students have received this accolade, following the successes in 2024 of ArtCenter projects Chú Mó in 2024 and Kitchen Kauldron in 2023.

In an immersive and thought-provoking experience, ChromaCorp players are placed in a “dream job” at a fictional company that controls the global color supply. But all is not as it seems. Players soon find themselves balancing mundane desk work with acts of rebellion as they discover the company’s questionable methods for harvesting color. As they extract colors to meet their daily quotas, they gradually unveil ChromaCorp's dark secrets and are faced with the challenging choice: will they continue their tasks or join with other employees to quietly resist the company’s influence?

“This award is the culmination of countless hours by our students to create a game that is unlike any other,” said Christophe Gomez, ArtCenter’s associate chair of the Game Design program. “It is enormously satisfying to see their creativity acknowledged by a very discerning audience of game lovers, in addition to seeing ChromaCorp placed amongst the top experimental game projects.”

ChromaCorp’s alt.ctrl.GDC Audience Award follows its win last fall at IndieCade 2024, where it won the Live Action Award. Its recent success at GDC, amongst 20 competitors, solidifies ChromaCorp’s place among the most innovative game projects of the past year.

The ChromaCorp student team includes Ethan Chamberlain, Jason Jiang, Irene Jung, Miree Kim, Nicole Kim, Fox Miao, Daeun Min, Sydney Price, Christina Wang, Monica Zhao and Galina Zhu, led by Justin Andarza (ArtCenter faculty).

Game Design is a curricular track in ArtCenter’s Entertainment Design department, which also offers tracks in Concept Design and Animation. ArtCenter’s Game Design program prepares students to create and convey game concepts through prototyping and production for multiple platforms. Students explore all aspects of video game design with training in user experience, programming, design languages, and the production process. With a focus on hands-on experience, the program provides students with the opportunity to practice navigating artistic expression, worldbuilding, storytelling and level design.

ArtCenter’s Entertainment Design program uniquely culminates in a Bachelor of Science degree, versus a Bachelor of Arts. This distinction underscores the confluence of storytelling, gameplay and visual development alongside the technical rigor required for success.

Graduates of the program are sought out by leading companies such as Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Sony Pictures Animation, Blur, 343, Riot Games, Paramount, Activision Blizzard, Santa Monica Studio, Netflix and Marvel. ArtCenter alumni are leaders in the video game, animation, theme park, live-action film/television and toy design industries.

ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 1930 and is located in Pasadena, California. A global leader in art and design education, ArtCenter offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide variety of industrial design disciplines as well as visual and applied arts. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.