Whereas our interim could have best been summed up by the questions: what the fuck are you guys doing, our final review was met with praise from a professor impressed that we managed to tackle random level generation in only a week and still build a game that felt cohesive.
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Locked out of all of our resources for about a week, in the middle of our first game prototype assignment, our cohort learned a very valuable lesson about planning, deadlines, and improvising.
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With apologies to my regular followers, I live in Florida. Consequently, this weeks posts will be delayed due to the hurricane. You can expect posts to resume next Monday, September 25th, 2017.
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The first week did quite a good job of introducing us to the ideas we’ll be working with and the people we’ll come to depend on over the next year. What it did not prepare me for was that giant blue asylum demon of work
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It turns out there is a fantastic “why” someone would want to attend a school for game design. It’s the same reason why someone would want to attend Hogwarts, it’s magical. That and it creates a direct in to an industry that is notoriously difficult for individuals to break into.
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Now for anyone who’s read my previous work they’ll know I’m not a developer by trade. My background is in biological anthropology. However, I wanted to be a programmer. As it turns out FIEA had consider this exact scenario and offered a program for “Technical Producers” programming minded designers who could build out systems and create scripts, without worrying about the details of physics engines and optimizations. Once I zeroed in on what route to take, I discovered my first great obstacle to entering gaming school was…to build a freaking game...
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Team play, persuasion, organization, quantitative data skills, read/editing skills, software knowledge, and job related technical skills all utilized different parts of the brain; require different styles of training, and (in some cases) out right different mindsets. One would not approach analyzing quantitative data with the same outlook as someone attempting to motivate a team....one has to wonder how they can have enough specialization to standout from the crowd while still being well rounded enough to be a versatile and valuable employee.
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Anthropology is STEM field. In fact it is the STEM field that validated STEM in the first place. It can do so because of the unique approach anthropology takes to a given subject matter. It’s holistic tradition demands that practitioners examine a subject culturally, historically, biologically, and linguistically to get the real “big picture.” Rather than look at individuals or small groups, as psychologist do, anthropologist are truly concerned with the whole, but still focused enough on how the whole impacts individuals that it does not get caught up in “systems” as sociologist do. This approach maps itself to technology’s interaction with the consumer in a remarkable fashion.
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