VIVERSE announces the winners of its first global university VIVERSE Spark hackathon

VIVERSE, an immersive content creation platform, has announced the winners of its first global hackathon for universities, as it announced it has reached 1 million users across the world.

Hundreds of students from more than 40 universities joined the VIVERSE Spark hackathon, building games, interactive art, and social experiences using the platform for a chance to win cash prizes, gain skills, and build their professional portfolios.

The participants built a collection of video games and interactive experiences that run in web browsers across laptops, tablets and smartphones.

“Through the challenge, [students] worked with 3-D modelling software, a number of game engines, and created interactive worlds with custom character art, game mechanics. animation and physics, and narrative stories,” explains Tony Liao, Founding Director of the CougAR Lab at the University of Houston. “These are exactly the types of prompts we want our students to engage in, so they can not only learn technical skills but to weave all of their talents together to make something meaningful and push themselves to their limits.”

Three teams and one university were chosen as winners in each of the three categories: immersive storytelling, games, and social experiences.

“We're extremely honored to see such amazing, creative works built in VIVERSE, from the next generation of creators,” comments Andranik Aslanyan, Head of Growth, HTC at VIVERSE.

“We built VIVERSE as a springboard for imagination and creativity, to help people learn how to make immersive worlds and build a career out of it. To everyone who participated in this year’s hackathon, we couldn’t be prouder to show off your creations for the world to see.”