The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student

Back in November of 2006 when I was still trying to decide the path I wanted to take to get into the industry, feminist game blogger Guilded Lily, aka. Lisa Laughy, announced that she was going to Guild Hall:

I am very pleased to announce that I have been accepted into the Masters of Interactive Technology, Art Creation Specialization, at The Guildhall at SMU. In January I will begin a two year intensive program to learn everything I need to know (but was afraid to ask) about how to create art assets for the digital games industry.

Only a few weeks after starting the program, however, did she realize that “intensive” was synonymous with “takes all your time and then some”. Under the guise of preparing students for work environments, the program’s boot camp-like environment was not flexible enough to allow Lisa to deal with unexpected personal problems while still being able to keep up with school. She has written about her experiences both on GameCareerGuide.com (I Am a Game School Dropout) and on her blog (Game School Dropout: Whining 101). (more…)

From start to finish, applying for and getting into HAL was a nerve-wracking experience. Although I had applied to Yamasa without any outside help, that was in English and this was in Japanese. Not to mention that the Japanese way of doing applications slightly differs from the American and Canadian one.

I was lucky to have Yamaguchi-sensei, who was my main class teacher at the time, and Taniyama-sensei, a private lesson teacher who I do gaming-related classes with, to help me through. Without them I probably could have done it, but it would have been a lot worse of an experience.

In what follows below, I’ll be detailing the process of how I got into HAL, from the beginning up until I was told that I got in. (more…)