How I got into the Games Industry
A small recap of events starting from I decided I wanted to be a games developer to present day including all the mistakes and turning points along the way.
Young and lazy
During A-levels, I started to get really lazy at school and more or less went through a rebel phrase where I honestly didn’t care about anything let alone my future and just wanted to have fun with my friends. So, when it came filling in the UCAS form (UK University forms), I really didn’t know what to put in and I didn’t talk to my parents about it. The deadline loomed so I literally made a snap decision that I wanted to do something with computers since they interested me somewhat.
Games Design Courses - Are they worth it?
Disclaimer: Everything here is of my own opinion and do not necessarily represent any other party’s views.
Note: When I refer to game developers, this means I am referring to everyone involved in the development of the game such as programmers, artists, producers, designers, etc.
There has been increasingly more enquires about becoming a games developer in forums related to games careers such as the ones on IGDA and GameCareerGuide. As much as I am happy that more and more people are interested in entering the games industry, the majority of these are asking on how they become a games designer and which games design course should they choose because they naturally see it as the best way to get into the industry. After all, if you want to be a plumber, you do a plumbing course. So if you want to be games designer, you do a games design course, right?
If only it was that simple.
TED - ED Brain Trust »
I am a big fan of TED talks and they have recently announced a new section to their organisation, TED - ED Brain Trust.
Open learning seems to taken more of a forefront nowadays (as seen with MIT Open Courseware) as the Internet becomes more and more widespread and commonplace.
This is a presentation by David Braben from Frontier in Learning Without Frontiers 2011 on his thoughts regarding ICT being taught in the classroom and how games can be used to encourage children to engage in the subject.
More interesting is his showcasing of the £15 computer, the Raspberry Pi which comes with everything needed to program it on the computer itself much like how the Commandore 64 came with BASIC built in. David is aiming to distribute this to children through schools via a charity he is in the process of setting up.
