End of the beginning
The end of the first semester and it has been quite an experience. This time has been the most career-focused till now. Even when I was working in a company as a mobile game developer, it did not feel like this. I never really wanted to make games for mobile as I feel they limit a lot of experience due to their form and technology. I'd be a fool to overlook mobile game development though. As technology is improving lightning-fast and its impossibles are now possible and now I am more focused on the medium rather than its platform.
I had some great and insightful courses which helped a lot and made a couple of projects, both of which turned out to be great! This blog will be about what I learned from the few subjects I truly enjoyed.
A master's program doesn't have the same way of teaching as bachelor's. What I mean by this is that you will be fed with a lot of ways to get information and it is up to you what to do with it. Professors will guide you, help you but wont hold your hand and make you draw an apple. They'll tell you what an apple looks like and the rest is up to you.
I'll start with my favourite course of the semester - Game Design. Here, once every week an industry veteran came to give a lecture on their topic of expertise. You're like me if you easily forget a lecture the next day. But our department is meant for people like me. So after every lecture, we had to write a one-page reflection on the respective topic to submit before the next week. You write about what you felt, what's your take on the topic, yada yada yada. This helps retain information, right? To top it all, before very lecture, random groups are formed and everyone discusses their reflection with each other. This way you give and get knowledge. I was actually blown away with this and I loved every session. It's such a simple process but so efficient. We had lectures from the narrative designer of Alan Wake, Creative director of SimCityBuildIt, makers of Noita - Nolla Games to name a few. It was amazing.
I'll start with my favourite course of the semester - Game Design. Here, once every week an industry veteran came to give a lecture on their topic of expertise. You're like me if you easily forget a lecture the next day. But our department is meant for people like me. So after every lecture, we had to write a one-page reflection on the respective topic to submit before the next week. You write about what you felt, what's your take on the topic, yada yada yada. This helps retain information, right? To top it all, before very lecture, random groups are formed and everyone discusses their reflection with each other. This way you give and get knowledge. I was actually blown away with this and I loved every session. It's such a simple process but so efficient. We had lectures from the narrative designer of Alan Wake, Creative director of SimCityBuildIt, makers of Noita - Nolla Games to name a few. It was amazing.
Next, we had Games Seminar, which was an open (to suggestions) class - studio visits, small but relevant excursions, playtesting sessions or simply game discussions. This usually started with an informative discussion on the current affairs and opinions of the gaming industry. I really liked the open nature of this course. Each day was allotted to a student and they had to decide what they wanted all of us to do. My turn is yet to come and I am hoping to invite Sergey Mohov fro Remedy Entertainment to speak about the design of their game Control. How cool!? Although, the spread of coronavirus may mess things up.
Then we had GamesNow! which are monthly lectures by high profile professionals on a recent topic of the industry. These are usually streamed so you will be able to find these lectures on YouTube. This is where I met the concept artists of Spideman: Into the Spiderverse ❤️ ,and Brooke Maggs, the narrative designer of the award-winning game, Florence.
These months of intensive courses generally end with a workshop week where we had Game Research and Analysis. Every day we tackled a different aspect from monetization to game balancing to the psychology behind design choices. This was already a great end to the semester but it got 10x better when our professor decided to take us to HopLop. It is a playground park with maze-house, obstacle course, rock climbing, etc. for kids mostly. Even we couldn't complete most of the obstacle courses but that is another topic of discussion. The main purpose of this was to try out the rock climbing interaction game our Professor had worked on by ValoMotion. It was a lot of fun and was my most active day in Finland yet. We ended the day with a relaxing glass of beer and chill.
Then we had GamesNow! which are monthly lectures by high profile professionals on a recent topic of the industry. These are usually streamed so you will be able to find these lectures on YouTube. This is where I met the concept artists of Spideman: Into the Spiderverse ❤️ ,and Brooke Maggs, the narrative designer of the award-winning game, Florence.
These months of intensive courses generally end with a workshop week where we had Game Research and Analysis. Every day we tackled a different aspect from monetization to game balancing to the psychology behind design choices. This was already a great end to the semester but it got 10x better when our professor decided to take us to HopLop. It is a playground park with maze-house, obstacle course, rock climbing, etc. for kids mostly. Even we couldn't complete most of the obstacle courses but that is another topic of discussion. The main purpose of this was to try out the rock climbing interaction game our Professor had worked on by ValoMotion. It was a lot of fun and was my most active day in Finland yet. We ended the day with a relaxing glass of beer and chill.
One thing that I admire about the pedagogy here is the open ended-ness of it. Anyone can ask, comment or contend, which makes the learning process dynamic and more personal in a way as well. I'm going home this winter with an awful lot of games to play and news to catch up to. Until next time, keep playing. Merry Christmas!
Comments
Post a Comment