Lessons From Week One

So, it's Monday. I just had to say goodbye to my wife at the airport. She was visiting for the weekend but has a contract to finish up back in Edmonton. She'll be rejoining me permanently here in New West in October. I have a handful of assignments on the docket and a week's worth of game design wisdom to share.

Let's start by mentioning that I am a critical person, and I have no trouble voicing my opinion and objectively taking care of business. These qualities (good and bad) are earned through having your work broken down and rebuilt, and allowing your ego to be bruised until you realize that it simply isn't the important issue. I need to remind myself that many of my classmates are fresh out of high school, or near enough, and they won't be used to a semi-professional workplace; If I want to stay friendly—and I do—I will need to be sensitive.

Also, in re-reading my last post I realized I was allowing a bad attitude to creep in and colour my outlook on some of those initial classes this past week. This will serve no one, and it's simply too early to judge. Besides, the school has to solve for the lowest common denominator, and (in my case) that means that the C# and Photoshop classes will feel a tad overwhelming at times, with me pulling a good deal of satisfaction (and maybe some boredom) from the classes focused on my strengths (creativity, communication, leadership). I'll correct this attitude starting right now. It'll help that I've almost entirely beaten the cold I am convinced I caught from one of the TAs. ;)

"Treat your time at VFS as a year-long job interview." We've heard this a few times from a few sources so far, and I think it's really good advice. Many of our instructors are working in the videogame industry right now—the class on Thursday was run by a passionate man who runs his own development studio in Burnaby, for example, and he's doing some interesting things with Augmented Reality Games that I'm looking forward to learning about. Other instructors, like the head of our program, have dozens or hundreds of contacts throughout the industry. We students need to earn the trust of those around us so they will want to pass on those opportunities or even recommend us. People like to hire people they like. It's my goal to be hired before I graduate.

I've been fortunate to meet and get to know several people working at BioWare these past few years, and I've heard from them that "fit" with the company culture is often as important as a person's skillset. After all, skills can be taught on the job, but having an open mind, a great attitude, and passion for your work usually come with the person. More good reasons to be the humble, outgoing, hard-working guy that consistently does good work.

Let's talk about specialization. Unless you are running the company (which is my far-flung goal), you are much more competitive in the job market to be the best at something specific. Outgoing generalists with an understanding of their entire product make pretty excellent leaders and project managers, but they'll never get hired to, say, be a concept artist when there are plenty of talented specialized concept artists out there. They'll also have trouble breaking into the industry without a good deal of experience behind them. So, while my goals include being a talented, generalist leader—running the show and bringing the amazing talents of others together to make incredible shared storytelling experiences for the public—I would be better served by specializing in one or two specific game design disciplines.

My writing background (and passion for storytelling) makes it pretty clear that I should focus on Game Story Writing (flavour text, dialogue, cinematics), but I also have some small artistic talent and a flair for creating dungeons and game encounters, which will lead me naturally to level design (though I have an uphill battle learning UDK and the other tools most level designers use). So, in one year, I will have a diploma in game design with a specializations in Game Story Writing and Level Design. I'll have to find out how (if) our specializations affect our certification.

As I gear up for week two I'm going to focus on beefing up my Photoshop and C# "skills" (through online tutorials and maybe asking one of the other students to walk me through a few things), maintaining an upbeat attitude, and NOT getting sick. For now, I have about 20 more analog game concepts I want to come up with. I'm getting some wacky ideas with a lot of potential to make excellent board/card games. :)

Happy gaming.