as a Game Developer
Steven Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, yelled on an infamous conference
"Developers, developers, developers… Developers!"
I'm a game developer. No matter which role I performed in a game project, no matter how I get involved in the game project, no matter whether I code or not in the game project, I'm firstly a game developer.
I'm currently pursuing a master's degree in game engineering at the University of Utah's Entertainment Arts and Engineering, a fantastic video games graduate program. I create video games with many other talented designers, engineers, and artists here.
What's my role in game development?
- Engineer: I work with various game engines. Unity, Unreal, Cocos Creator, Monogame, GameMaker, etc. Technology would never become a gap between me and fancy gameplays.
- Designer: I usually do the design works in collaboration, provide fancy ideas at the pre-production phase of game projects.
- Solo Game Developer: Why not sometimes make tiny games without a team? Though I still need to get access of free art assets.
What if I want to do both?
I can never find a better term to describe me other than "Technical Game Designer." I always feel excited when I find some excellent new tools that might help build innovative gameplays. I'll always think about:
- Can I integrate this new tool into my current game projects?
- Could I find the best candidate to use this tool to create fancy content?
- Will it enhance the workflow to reduce unnecessary repeating works?
- If it has some weakness, can I refine it by modifying its source codes?
Then I'd take steps to research, implement, apply, and refine those new tools. This cycle could help me in building game creation tools from designer's need. I feel happy when supporting aowsome game designers and cooperate closely with developers and artists.
I understand that such position is still not abundant in the industry, so I'm also developing my design skill trees, with gameplay programming practices. If you are looking for a gameplay programmer or game designer, I'm still confident to be a candidate.
To those who want to use video game as a method of communication:
Sometimes I cooperate with people who aren't familiar with game creation, such as artists, musicians, social workers, or scientists. I utilize my technologies and methodogies of games to help them convey the experiences they wish, to the audience. I can cooperate with you if you're:
- An artist: You have fancy interactive ideas but lack an experienced developer to cooperate with;
- A social worker: You have a story about vulnerable groups to tell, but worrying about not being able to reach to audience in traditional media;
- A scientist: You want to show your science researches or popularize some science concepts to the public, to improve public understanding of science.
I have a full skill set to help you create interactive projects, game or non-game, for your purpose. You can call those projects "Serious Games" as you wish, though I don't really like this term. My undergraduate direction was mass communication for science topics, and I have several such cross-disciplinary practices on file.