It has been a while since my last post. There have been many things going on in my life and I have finally reached a tipping point.
I am going into the video game industry.
For the past couple of years I have worked through an Electrical and Computer Engineering curriculum at North Carolina State University. It has been rewarding, challenging and very insightful. There is just one problem: the curriculum I am following is designed to train Electrical and Computer Engineers, not video game developers and entrepreneurs.
I’ve struggled much over the past week in internship and coop interviews when asked the question “Why did you go to school for Engineering?” The answer is clear to me, “…because I like a challenge.” Today I spoke to my academic advisor about my goals of working in the video game industry, I have spoken to many of my professors about my development interests — that I spend my spare time making games and that it is my dream to do it for a living.
Unfortunately, due to my busy schedule and involvement with school I have not quite had time to finish any projects, or build a comprehensive game portfolio. I have jumped around many aspects of game development — 3D Art, 3D Modelling, Object Oriented Programming, Scripting, Writing — and as such have been unable to piece together a specialized collection of completed works.
I plan to change that.
Currently I have a few projects which are really close to completion. I hope to find the time to finish these within the year. I have also been trying to make more efforts to network in the industry, and find people who would be willing to take advantage of my skill-set despite my Engineering background.
The current plan is to acquire my BSEE and BSCPE degrees and look for work to sustain me until I find work in the industry, or until I acquire sufficient capital to attempt entry into the industry for myself as an indie developer.
I don’t know where this road will take me, and I post my thoughts here so that those who care to know may understand my situation. I appreciate your views of this site, and I look forward to hearing feedback once I have started engineering better games.
Sincerely,
Austin R. Snider
DesertEagle PWN