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.
So, it’s been a little over a week since school started. It both is, and isn’t, what I expected. Having gone through various types of schools — typical K - 12 American schooling, university in Canada, and finally Japanese language school — I have experienced a range of approaches to teaching. HAL has incorporated elements from all of those so far, as well as adding its own unique style in the process. (more…)
Sony Online Entertainment is holding a competition to decide who gets a $10,000 tuition scholarship.
From the official site:
The official SOE G.I.R.L. — Gamers In Real Life — scholarship is the first of its kind with The Art Institutes to encourage students toward career paths in the creative and applied arts, ultimately resulting in the development of games that are more interesting for women to play.
[...]
The G.I.R.L. Scholarship will officially begin on April 1, 2008. In order to be eligible to participate, entrants must be a current student at one of The Art Institutes schools. Students are required to submit an in-game design, concept art and two essays. The deadline to enter is May 31, 2008. The winner will be announced on or about June 30, 2008.
One skilled student will win a $10,000 tuition scholarship towards his or her education at The Art Institutes school at which he or she is currently enrolled and a paid internship of up to ten (10) weeks at one of the Sony Online Entertainment studios (located in Austin, Denver, San Diego and Seattle). Entrants will be judged by a panel of industry professionals from SOE.
Since it’s so narrow — limited to only those currently enrolled at one of The Art Institutes schools — I’m not sure how effective it will be at promoting the stated goal. Still, it’s drawn a fair amount of PR and anything that raises awareness as to the barriers that women face when trying to enter the industry is good in my book.
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.
