13 notes &
This brings back very fond memories. This was our last week or two of development in my final year of university (at The University of Huddersfield, 2009). The Computer Games Design course was partnered up with the Computer Games Programming course in small teams to basically make any game we could. In those last two weeks we basically had this or the room next door to ourselves, 9am-5pm.
I (in the red shirt there) was given the role of Lead Artist, and was basically responsible for any 2D assets on screen, as well as some concept art work at the beginning. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in my educational life, it was stressful, challenging, inspiring, exciting and most of all, it taught me how a small development studio ‘might’ actually work. Considering we were thrown together and left to our own devices, I think we did really well as a team and I was incredible proud of us all, partly for not wanting to kill each other (an outcome some of the other teams appeared to be approaching).
This module was equivalent to our Dissertations in terms of grade percentage, and yet somehow it seemed to be a whole lot more work. As well as making a game, we had to write a 5,000 word ‘diary’ on it too, bearing in mind our Dissertations were 7,000 words. I didn’t do too well on my Dissertation, I picked a stupidly difficult topic which I really enjoyed researching but had no chance from the get-go really, but thankfully this team module was perhaps my most successful piece of work I’ve ever done. In fact I was something like 2 marks off a ‘1st’, and considering I was working in a role I’ve always aspired to have at a real studio, I will always look back on this and be proud of myself and the work I created.
It also spawned Blue Demon Studio, the development team I now work with, started by myself and two of my friends from this very team, and I couldn’t imagine what I’d be doing now if not this.
‘Pretty much a ditto, though I was working as lead designer (and Blue Demon’s coder, James, worked as lead programmer - funny, that!), and I was stood behind the camera here in some guise.
The course was a rubbish one, but for times like this when we really got the chance to knuckle down and do as we hope to do a year from now, leading our own studio.’
