Language software company Rosetta Stone held its first annual game jam last weekend -- an interesting concept to promote for a big corporate company that is apparently looking at game-like ways to promote interactivity and new ideas for learning languages.

The firm gave participants 36 hours to build a video game from scratch that will "inspire, motivate, and utterly floor Rosetta Stone learners". Held in Harrisonburg, the event attracted 29 participants from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Those developers formed ten teams (consisting of up to four members) and slaved at their computers for the next day and a half to create their game in time.

A group of professional developers -- Firaxis's (Civilization series) Jack Cooke, David McDonough, and Will Miller was chosen as the grand prize winner with a game titled Pathogen. Their prize includes a MacBook Pro with a 30" cinema display, Rosetta Stone TOTALe subscriptions for all team members, and the opportunity to have their game presented to Rosetta Stone executives and published on a Rosetta Stone webpage.

Lida Mehrani and Brian Cosgrove, both students from Maryland's Montgomery College, placed second with Alien Argot, winning $500 and Rosetta Stone TOTALe subscriptions. Rosetta Stone's panel of judges selected Word Well, which was produced by a team of four Carnegie Mellon students -- Alan Nochenson, Jacob Yanovsky, Maxwell Koo, and Ari Rubenstein -- as the third prize winner. Hopefully these projects will all show up online soon!