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Priyesh Dixit Scholarship

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Game Designers Network India is raising money for one lucky and deserving indie game developer from India to attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in 2017. The funds will be spent on one All Access pass to GDC

The Game Developers Conference, which takes place in Feburary/March every year in San Francisco, is the largest and longest running conference for game developers to meet, network and share best practices in game design worldwide. I have seen the lives of game developers from India completely changed after the opportunity to come to the US and attend GDC. Please contribute and help me change another!

This scholarship is named after Priyesh Dixit.

Priyesh moved from India to North Carolina, USA with his family on February 5, 1995. He spent most of his youth in Charlotte, NC. Ever since he purchased an original Gameboy he knew he had to become a game developer. This became his dream and goal that he strived to achieve. All through his education he included as many extra-curricular activities that had to do with programming. After graduating the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in May 2008 he obtained his Masters in Computer Science. His journey took him to Sugar Land, TX where he stepped foot in his dream industry. While working at TimeGate he worked on Section 8 and it’s sequel Section 8: Prejudice. He also published two papers: “Discovering 3D Surface Information Values from Gameplayers” and “Understanding Intelligence in Games using Player Traces and Interactive Player Graphs.”



At last, his journey brought him back home to his family when he got a job at Virtual Heroes working as a Software Engineer. Throughout his life Priyesh never turned down the opportunity to help others. From being the president of a local chapter of Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) based in UNC at Charlotte. Before he became the President he volunteered at the Siggraph ACM Sandbox Symposium in 2007 and performed tasks such as directing attendees, cleaning up and setting up game rooms. It was inevitable that his path should cross with the Conference Associate (CA) program at the Game Developers Conference. Priyesh was accepted as a volunteer for GDC 2013, however, he discovered that he had a cancerous tumor and needed to undergo radiation treatment during the time of the conference. Devastated with this news he had to give up his spot as a CA.

After undergoing treatments and a surgery Priyesh was back in full force and applied to be a CA for GDC 2014. He was accepted and was dubbed a CA for the first time. With his positive attitude and friendly aura he excelled at being a CA. In 2015, due to changes to the Conference Associate (CA) program, the International Ambassador (IA) program was created to help more aspiring game developers from outside the US get a chance to attend GDC. Priyesh jumped at the chance to help the cause. He went to GDC with his own money and did all he could to help the IAs.

After two years of battling cancer Priyesh had grown weary and was unable to help as much as he could in the past. He was unable to attend GDC 2016 but still was able to help IA as much as he could. Even with his sickness Priyesh spent his time reading IA applications. Unfortunately, no matter how strong of a will power one has, there are some things you can’t change. After multiple surgeries, and treatments the cancer grew too fast. On May 12, 2016 Priyesh passed away. He may not be here but his legacy lives on through all of the people he encountered. Anyone who had the pleasure of knowing Priyesh has nothing but love for him. There isn’t a person on this Earth that could hate Priyesh. He just had the ability to bring the best out of the people around him.



Our target is $1800 which we hope to raise by December 30th.

Organizer

Blake Merriam
Organizer
San Mateo, CA

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