Five Dakota State University students were awarded top honors in a Game Narrative Review Competition for the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) held in San Francisco in March.  They are students of Jeff Howard, assistant professor of Game Development and Design at DSU.  Sophomore Mostafa Haque won one of the three top Platinum level awards, for which he'll receive a free, all-access pass to the GDC.  This year, Howard assigned his fall 2013 class, Game 360: Narrative Design, to submit an analysis of a game narrative to the competition.  Howard helps students and other designers dig into the storyline of video games to make them, just that, a story.  He teaches game design classes with the narrative design focus area of the major, including popular game genres, such as survival horror, action-adventure and strategy.  Howard and Haque joined Dakota Midday Thursday.