About

MISSION AND HISTORY

The EGD Collective is a space where everyone, regardless of who they are or what their relationship to gaming is, can come together in a welcoming environment. Whether you're a hardcore FPS player, an artist or musician looking to build a portfolio, or just like playing Candy Crush on your phone, there's a place for you here.

The EGD Collective chapter of Hunter College is also an official College League of Legends club, a Tespa chapter, and the only academic chapter of the International Game Developers Association in NYC.

We are a professional organization, offering professional development and services to all. We spearhead initiatives within Hunter College and the wider-NYC community, currently working with the Film and Media Department of Hunter College to develop and implement academic programs in game development, and with games industry professionals across disciplines to create public programming.

That interdisciplinary nature defines us. In fact, our staff meetings are more like senate meetings! Each of our staff plan events in the areas they represent, and it all happens at the same time in the same space. This results in a very unique atmosphere where everyone gets out of their comfort zone; we have game designers trying League of Legends to see what all the hype is, our Hearthstone team learning how to use Photoshop, and Dungeon Masters using their narrative world-building skills at game jams.

To see a little more of what we do, please look at our Programs page or join our Discord server!

HISTORY

Originally known as the Game Design Collective, we were founded in November 2016 at Hunter College. We applied to charter officially as a club with Hunter College in August of 2017, but were denied. Due to these circumstances, we ended up joining forces with 2 other clubs who were also denied for charter- the League of Legends club and the Super Smash Bros. Melee Esports Team- and submitted an appeal to try and charter together as one organization. This is when we became the Esports and Game Design Collective. Our appeal was denied, and were told to wait until the next application cycle. We continued to operate anyways, thanks to the dedication of our members and the support of the Theater Department, and were approved in September 2018 to charter.

Over the past three years, we have grown to service over 550 students and have established ourselves as the ringleader of games throughout CUNY. However, we still currently lack sufficient funding and internal support on campus. We have also grown too large to continue our operations within the Theater Department's space. To ensure our organization receives the support it needs and to solidify ourselves as a public figure within NYC games communities, we are in the process of incorporating and filing for 501(c)(3) status as a public nonprofit arm dedicated to supporting all of us who know that affordable education, the games industry, and the communities these institutions create are important.