I should be worrying about the upcoming J-Ken, but instead I find myself thinking about the fact that I’m going to have to take a test before I can become employed. This is apparently standard practice for Japanese companies, and I know that big companies like Nintendo are notorious for having difficult math portions.
Are there any American companies that do this? I mean, most of my friends are employed and I have never heard of any of them having to take a test… not even those who are game programmers (which is where I’ll have to start out in all likelihood). Am I just that oblivious, or is it really just that Japan in particular believes the malarkey that tests are the best way to measure aptitude?
I was asked to post a follow up to my first article, so I pulled from First Impressions and wrote the rest from scratch (I later used the “Academic Life” section as the foundation for A glimpse into my academic life). Check it out: My Search for a Japanese Game School Part II: Inside.
Today, when talking about the history of video games my teacher mentioned that 1987 was when he first bought the Famicon (ie. NES). Then he asked all of the students who hadn’t been born yet to raise their hands. 90% of the class did.
The NES was my first console. Ever. I’m old enough to have played games on my friend’s Atari. Heck, I remember when hard drives were measured in megabytes. My computer back in the States has an old 3.6 gig HD in it and I remember when I was excited because of how big that was.
25 isn’t that old. Really. But thinking about how my real experience is simply “history” to my classmates sure makes me feel old.
I was asked to do an adaptation of my Where I started and Getting into HAL posts for Game Career Guide. The finished article, My Search for a Japanese Game School, includes tightened prose and some information on the curriculum that I didn’t include in the articles here. Be sure to check it out!
