If you are an IT/engineering student looking for a challenge (or to earn some extra money), be sure to check out the Google Summer of Code 2008. Basically Google sponsor students to work on a wide variety of open source projects - including some games and game technology, including software like BZFlag, ScummVM, SDL, and Battle for Wesnoth. The full project list has just been announced and there's a huge range of different software to choose from, so head over and check it out.