HEW 2008 – Level 1 (Unfinished)

Current Deadline: Finish basic gameplay by February 19
Current Progress: Start room and level 1 finished

Not sure if things are going better than expected, or worse. On the one hand, I’ve spent a lot of time procrastinating (or taking care of other things). I got sidetracked by an assignment to code a SameGame, which ate up about a week of class time. Then, this week (literally the day after I finished it, of course) my teacher said we no longer had to turn it (people complained that they didn’t have time to do their HEW project). Getting the display to work like I want it to always seems to take twice, or three times, the amount of time I expected it to. And don’t get me started on debugging.

But, I have some time tomorrow during my AS work shift to start on level 2. Since the basic game mechanics are the same as the start room I’ll have a solid base to work with, so that’s a plus. Level 3 is a labyrinth game that I coded for an assignment (that, if I recall correctly, we didn’t actually turn in). I want to make some modifications to it (clean up the board creation algorithms and add guards who move about the labyrinth randomly) but absolute worst case scenario I can do with simply porting it.

Assuming I make the March 19 deadline (ie. have all my levels coded and debugged), that gives me about a week to add the storyline and other text (explanation of the rules, controls, etc). The only problem is that everyone is going to be busy with their HEW assignment so I might not be able to get my friends to proofread my Japanese… which will undoubtedly result in hilarity when my senpai come and play the game. Hilarity for them, that is. Naturally, I will want to crawl under a rock and die.

Even if it does have cringe worthy awesome Japanese mistakes, though, my game is going to rock. Well, as much as a game coded for the console API can rock, that is.

PS. The game has a name: 『魔女の館』 (“The Witch’s Mansion”)! I wanted it to be “The Sorceress’ Tower”, but that didn’t sound right in Japanese.

So, we got our homework for summer break (at least, I think we have all of it… but knowing my teacher he might spring another assignment or two on us tomorrow).

We have to do about 170 questions in preparation for our certification exams and show the work for them. We also got assigned 5 pages of problems involving C++, but I already did all but one. Some of my friends have started the homework and they’re already despairing. I’m going to see what can be done on the plane ride home…. then I need to figure out a schedule for getting everything done while still having time to, you know, visit my family and friends.

Homework over break is definitely one of the things that I don’t like about going to school in Japan…

Since I know everyone is dying to know more about what kind of system HAL uses for academics, this post will be devoted to talking about the basics of my academic life as a first year student. It should be noted that while the general process is the same from year to year, the specifics such as classes and even class groupings can change year to year as the staff at HAL tweak it in order to help give students the best educational experience possible. (more…)

AKA. Andrea gets mail and responds to it!

So, thanks to my article on Game Career Guide and the shout out from JC Barnett of Japanmanship I’ve been getting a few e-mails a week. (I hope y’all have added my RSS feed, ’cause there’s not going to be much of interest here until April!) One of the things that has come up more than once is financial questions: how much is tuition, can you do a part-time job while studying, and is there financial aid.

So, what follows is what I’ve gleaned from the website’s FAQ with some of the information from Evan’s interview on Kotaku. (more…)

If you’re dying to know what life at HAL is like and don’t want to wait the two months until I start there, you’re in luck! It turns out Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft tracked down Evan Shulgold — who currently attends the Nagoya branch of HAL — to talk to him about it. The article, Wanna Study Game Design in Japan? Here’s How, covers everything from classes to tips on what to do when you’re there.

Here’s an excerpt:

1. Japanese level
I’m actually pretty surprised about how simple the Japanese used in classes is. Like my teacher said, if you can have regular conversations with people, you’ll be OK. It depends on what you study, but obviously a lot of computer-related technical terms are katakana (words borrowed from English), so you likely won’t have any problems. On the entrance test, there were a few Japanese questions, but they were about level two or three of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Not too difficult. There was also an interview. The questions weren’t too difficult, and were mostly things you’d be asked by the old drunk Japanese guy sitting next to you and your friends in an Izakaya. It seemed to be more about making sure I could keep up with conversation than actually screening my personality or anything.

Evan is actually a grad from my language school, The Yamasa Institute, and we were briefly acquainted with each other before he left to begin a glamorous life of learning video game programming. He’s the one who first mentioned HAL to me, which got me thinking more seriously about game design school in Japan. It sounds like his Japanese portion of the entrance exam was easier than mine, though; some of the kanji they wanted me to write wasn’t standard for JLPT 2. Differences in the branches of the school, I suppose (I didn’t have to take a math exam, ha ha).

Anyway, I’m glad to hear he’s doing well, and what he’s said about the classes goes a long way to reassure me about the environment.

Although I knew I would want to revisit Lisa’s story again, I didn’t think it would be this soon. I’ve been keeping up with the comments on her blog, however, and I noticed that one of her classmates commented. I responded in thread, but I think that some of the points he brought up deserve more thought and analysis.

The person, calling themselves “Guildhall Student”, made the following argument:

It just takes a love, commitment, and talent to be in this industry. Its much like Music or Acting, honestly. You have to do lots of hard work to be discovered and only the best talent will make it and get the good jobs.

I first just want to take some time to talk about Guildhall Student’s comparison with the music and acting industries. I find it to be ironic that he mentions acting, with the recent debacle where it was reported that Jeff Robinov, the president of Warner Bros, said, “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”. While this allegation is “untrue” according to the studio (link roundup), it is an accurate reflection of what is taught in film school according to one student. Acting is no more free from discriminatory practices than game design is, nor the music industry for that matter.

Below I will look at how privilege enters into the equation when deciding on, and attending, gamer college. Although Guildhall Student specifically addresses age, I’ve decided to leave it out of this post because I don’t have the time to do the research to back up my argument. Instead I will focus on family and financial matters, and how the status quo can privilege young single men and end up discouraging diversity. (more…)

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…)