Greetings fellow crab-people. This month marks my second month at Full Sail University, one of the top schools in video game design and development. It has been my dream since the days of the Super Nintendo to create video games. Of course, back then I assumed we’d still be playing the Super Nintendo to this day. While the technology has changed, my dreams and ambitions have not.

Many people tell me that it is futile to go into the industry as only 8-20% of video games are ever profitable. To them I say: so what? So what if my game isn’t bought by the thousands? So what if I don’t make a dime because of pirates? So what if you think my game doesn’t deserve its price? People are still guaranteed to pick it up and enjoy what it has to offer; and to me, it feels better knowing that the game I helped to create is being labeled as “fun” by those that picked it up and gave it a shot. Yet still, I hear those that call themselves my friends tell me the horror stories of life after graduation. “I have friends that graduated from there a year ago and they still don’t have a job in the industry,” or “Have fun being poor since you’ll never be hired.” These attempts at shattering my life goal are futile, for nothing can stop me as I won’t let it. Hell, I’ve even suffered the same attacks from my own father, as he asked me at 14 years-old, “Son, tell me what you wanna do when you grow up, and don’t say any of that ‘I wanna make video games’ crap.” To these people that have tried to hinder my dreams of plugging in code and testing for bugs, I say “FUCK YOU!”

Now that I am finally at the only school I feel I belong, life just seems to make sense. Before venturing four states away to what I now call “home,” I felt like an outcast. Sure my friends and my younger family enjoyed video games, but I could never talk to anybody about what I think should be changed about them. Never before could I tell someone about why this particular game had this particular art direction, nor could I speak about why the developers wanted to craft their levels in this particular way. I find it really strange that out of all my friends that would play various types of video games, the only one that I could have such a conversation with was my just-getting-into-video games girlfriend, who understood more about why I was so passionate about the medium than everyone else I knew. I thank her every day for her support and for listening to my ravings and rants about nothing and everything I could say about video games.

I believe that when I found Gamer Blag! Giant Enemy Blog, I found the first real place I could discuss ideas about video games and not get lost looks or comments from my peers. You guys read all these articles written by different users and give them your feedback; striking up discussions about various topics in the video game world. Then I came to this school, and I found that every person in my class shares the same amount of geekiness and nerdiness that I do. If I hadn’t met people like you guys and my classmates, I’d feel like the only person that really gave a damn about the ideas and concepts that went into video games. Now that I know, through you and my school, that I am not alone, I can live happier being the nerd I’ve always been.

So if that was a little tl;dr for you, just know that I thank you for letting me know that I am not alone.

Now, on to the good stuff. As previously stated I am in my second month at Full Sail University. The school is structured very differently from your typical college. Instead of taking the same classes every day for one semester, you take a class that’s virtually 8 hours long for two days a week every month. While some might think that this approach is highly unappealing, know that it leaves no time for forgetting the material learned in class. Case and point, in my first month I had to take Pre-Cal (I had failed the math entrance exam, as did about all my class). In high school, I quit Pre-Cal because it was so hard and boring; but the Pre-Cal teacher at Full Sail made the learning fun. He was upbeat and funny, always cracking jokes with us. Every quiz we took I never made below an 80 due to the proximity of the days we had class and the learning environment.

The good thing about the course is that the class is relatively small. Since new students come to the school every month, the class sizes stay around the 20-30 people mark. This is a great advantage as we stick with the same people throughout the whole program, which runs about 21 months. Getting to know your classmates is important, as it is in any situation, since you will be seeing them for the rest of your life at Full Sail. It is recommended that you don’t make any enemies, as you will not enjoy your time if you are forced to work with them. However, everyone here is very friendly is most likely the same kind of person as you, so it should be relatively easy to make friends with your peers.

My second month means I start my first real game development class, which is Design Fundamentals. In this class, we come up with the ideas for games and how we will pitch them to companies, as well as learning what to research for the games, learning who we’re marketing to, and describing how the game is going to play. On my first day, we were divide into groups to come up with an idea for a game based on objects we received in a bag and a genre we were given. I wasn’t sure how this would play out as I’ve never really discussed what an awesome game would be with anyone. The brainstorming between the five of us in the group was amazing. Our objects: a toy shark, some weird ring toy that grew when pulled and shrank when pushed, and some white gloves. Our genre: action/adventure. Almost immediately we came up with our main character: a man who for some reason has shark attributes. After thinking over what the other two objects could be we came up with the following, ring: teleportation (based on the shape and the animation of the ring when pulled apart and pushed together); white gloves: a terrorist organization known as the White Hand. We all enjoyed our decisions and continued to brainstorm about what the story of the game would be. We came up with this,

A Navy SEAL gets involved in teleportaion experiments, but something goes wrong. He’s teleported to the middle of the ocean, but when he appears, a shark gets in his way. Because this is a molecular-based teleporter, his DNA gets spliced with the shark, which slowly makes him evolve. The man goes into a coma, and wakes up in a hospital later. Through news reports he finds out that a terrorist group known as the White Hand are in control of the teleportation device and have advanced the technology to benefit themselves in frightening ways. It is up to you, a super-powered freak of nature, to eliminate the White Hand and save the world from their diabolical scheme. Also, the final boss is a bear-man.

We decided that the tagline for the game would be “JAWS meets Rambo in an intense bloodbath action title.” Our characters catchphrase would be “Fuck you, I’m a shark!” God damn, if that doesn’t make you wanna play the game then what the hell are you doing playing video games?

That was just the first day of the real classes. In later classes we will learn programming via C++ and C#, and hopefully we’ll be able to develop this wicked awesome sounding game about a shark-man who saves the world. Already this program is looking to be more fun than any other kind of normal college class I would be taking just to get a degree in Computer Science. If you ever had the ambition to become a game designer or a game programmer, I say don’t let anyone stop you. The field has vast room for growth, and who knows, maybe you will develop the next revolutionary idea in gaming. The program is worth the money already, so give it a shot and you will not be disappointed.

If you have made it this far into the article, I thank you very much for bearing with me. I look forward to hearing your feedback about the games I will one day help to make.