Erin and I met through 1UP a few years ago when we were both working our way through game design programs at different schools. I was at The Art Institute in San Francisco and she was attending The University for Advancing Technology in Phoenix, Arizona. We've had countless discussions in that time about games, our classes, and now, our careers. After school, Erin went right into development as an Associate Producer and I went to work for 1UP. Despite our different career paths, we still had a lot to talk about. We wanted to extend that conversation to you all with a cooperatively written blog. We've named it Splash Damage. Every week, Erin and I will discuss and share our various experiences from school--along with some of the things we learned along the way--and hope that other prospective or current game students will join in on the talk.
I think I was probably 15 when my life plan became: videogame industry or bust. I spent a couple years attempting programming at first because that's what I thought I had to learn, but I really struggled with it. Later, I heard The Art Institute (Ai) schools were going to start offering degrees in Game Art & Design. I immediately looked into it and the curriculum sounded perfect: very little math. Once I saw that I could take classes called Level Design and Game Design and Gameplay, I was sold. I moved out to San Francisco in early 2003 to start the program. How did you hear about UAT?
Being an Arizona native, you'd expect that I'd have a better understanding of the universities in-state. When I was in high school I became attached at the hip to "Electronic Gaming Monthly" and felt that game journalism was my big thing. Much to my surprise, during my Junior year of high school my friend's mother informed me that there's a school in Arizona for Game Design: UAT. When I realized I wanted to be in game development, it seemed almost perfect timing. Fate? Maybe. Needless to say I enrolled June 30th, 2004 and haven't looked back since. How did starting at Ai work for you, Fresh? Were there orientations and introductions to all aspects of game development?
We had a standard orientation that introduced all of us to the school, but when they broke us into groups by major things got really interesting. For the first time I was sitting in a room with 30 kids that all wanted to do the same thing I did: work in the video game industry. We talked about what companies we wanted to work for, our favorite genres and developers, and where we came from. It was cool; we were all part of this new thing and nobody knew anyone. It birthed this sort of instant community. I'll never forget walking the halls in student housing my first night and seeing a bunch of guys in their apartment working away at building a Counter-Strike level. It was the first time I'd ever seen a group of people working on a videogame right in front of me. Did you have any kind of background in art or with any of the tools before starting school?
Actually, I didn't even know how to use Photoshop or knew what HTML meant. When I enrolled at UAT I was eligible for their JumpStart program. In the JumpStart program I started at UAT half a semester before the Fall and I was enrolled in 9 credit hours, but I had to do a full semesters work for those 9 credits. The cool thing about the program is that you are always with the same people, so it was nice getting to know everyone. If I maintained a high GPA for my first year, the University would pay for the classes. It was pretty nice finally being around people who wanted to be in the same industry. The hard part for me was that I had no clue what I wanted to be. No clue at all. Did you get it right away at Ai—what it was you wanted to be?
I've never heard of a JumpStart program. It sounds nice. I had no background with any of the art or tools that I was about to learn so a head start would have been great. This feels weird to say now, but, at the time, I was 200% positive that I was going to do nothing but make games. I read every article I could on designing games or postmortems. I planned to learn the tools and work my way up as an artist to a level or gameplay designer and then eventually a design director or something. My dream was to make my own games in the end. I noticed that most of the people in my class were thinking the same thing. We all thought we were the next Miyamoto, Wright, Sakaguchi, or whatever. Nerds.
I saw the same thing at UAT! Problem was it took me two years to figure out I was fit for production. I knew there was no way I could do programming and as an artist I didn't think I could cut it. I was a writer (and still am), however I didn't feel I could make it in that direction either. When I realized that I enjoyed Excel and organizing things, it only seemed natural that I'd become a producer - specifically, project management, not the designer side of production. That's where I ended up.
The first thing I used to tell prospective students is to approach the program with an open mind. I don't know if it was the same at UAT, but the Game Art curriculum at my school covered everything from fine art to programming. So, for the first couple of years you get a chance to dabble in all the different stops along a typical game development pipeline. Forget what you think you're gonna be and explore each area thoroughly to see what clicks. Find what your strengths and weaknesses are and learn to leverage that knowledge into creating a career path. Also, be ready for a lot of surprises along the way.
I wouldn't say I explored every avenue in my pursuit, but we had what was known as a Technology Core set of classes that were mandatory (like Gen Ed) to give each student a well-rounded "tech" background. While I would argue that I would have liked to see more coding than what I was given and more to select from for Project Management courses, once I realized Production was really my niche I hooked on immediately. One problem in the industry, though, is that there's no real standard for titles. It's hard to say you're a particular title and expect everyone to really understand what it is you do. But we can save that topic for another day.
We'd love to hear about other experiences students have had. What school do you go to? How did you hear about it? Also, let Erin and I know what kind of topics you'd like to see us cover as well as any other feedback here: jayfresh (at) area5.tv
Twitter: Jayfrechette/ActionFigureE
matt chandronait
