So this past week I had a very sobering conversation on path of my career with a fantastic instructor of mine who has a ton of industry experience, Net-net, I need to decide whether I’ll be a coder or an artist. Not because I was good at one or the other, but simply the fact of time to learn the plethora of tools, technologies and game engines out there just doesn’t exist. He also illuminated that the program I’m in isn’t geared toward creating game developers, but rather environment artists and game asset creators. Yikes! I wanted to learn everything so I could be in super demand after I graduated but now it seems I have to focus more on the modeling front. I don’t have a huge problem with this.
Here’s the kicker though – I’m in the one year certificate program and he let me know that’s just not enough time to create a kick-ass demo reel. THIS I have a problem with. Now I need to re-evaluate not only my focus, but my graduation date and hence, the date I get a job. Not cool given I have a family.
I think I barely scratched the surface in my convo with my instructor and need to dive more deeply into it, working out every little painstaking detail. Yeah, this is where sweating the small stuff really counts. You can throw you’re own cliche’ in here too.
I’m also having a great discussion on what is a game designer versus a game developer and who’s the one that gets final say on what gets put into a game. Check it out here.
Take the poll below and make a stand – game dev or game designer?
