I felt that the majority of the rapid prototyped games superseded the previous cohort’s prototypes however that was mostly due to scope. Being the novices we were at the beginning of the semester our games were hugely over scoped and not well polished. Near the end of the semester you could see as the individual teams learned; the project scopes got smaller and the final projects became more polished as a result. We also listened and cultivated Ron Weaver’s suggestions at the end of the projects. Ron has a wealth of criticism and praise. He was always more than happy to bestow his wealth on you if you’re brave enough to ask before the assignment is due. If you’re not brave enough to ask he will bestow it regardless when the assignment was turned.
The same holds true to the individual assignments given by the track teachers. I cannot speak much for the production class or art class, but in the production for media class Rick Hall had a tantalizing way of teaching. The questions he asked and the format in which he asked them echoed the industry. On more than one occasion in the middle of class he stopped teaching and broke us up into teams with a team leader, and elements from each track. He would then ask us for a task that might be asked in the industry. He would give us a chance to go through the thoughts on our own and guide us away from dangerous and time consuming conversations that can usually be overlooked. This too helped mold us over the past semester. We’re better at culling the scope of projects, as well as focusing in on the topics of importance when prompted with a broad and ambiguous problem.
Although I have mentioned the competitive nature from cohort 4 to cohort 3 and that we always want to outdo the previous cohort, some teachers take it one step further. For the first half of the semester Tom (the programming track teacher) held programming competitions against the programmers for the assignments due. What the winner would win would change, but it was always worth the effort. In addition near the end of the semester we were forwarded the opportunity to work on a simple two-week game in C++. Tom gave us a very simple OpenGL framework and we were told to plan out a game. We all split up into 2 programmer teams and pitched our ideas to tom. Upon approval we began developing the game. Three of the teams took the network approach while the other three did not. In the end these games were ported to the (original) Xbox, and most of them added in a multiplayer element, although none of them utilized the Xbox Secure Network Library (SNL). Were forced to learn and work through the problems on our own, as we would in the industry. We learned a lot through the porting process.
Throughout the semester we have been graced with presentations by various industry leaders (organized through great effort of the FIEA staff).
Our last presentation was by Steve Derrick of Vicarious Visions (owned by Activision). Although he did not know much about the Activision-Blizzard merger he did offer a vital answer when asked “How much of an edge a Master’s program like FIEA offer when getting hired”. He stated that it helps immensely and that the type of people who get their master’s degrees and PhDs are a different kind of people. They are the kind of people who are hard workers and work well within the environment of the game studio. As such they are in more demand than a student fresh out of college with their Bachelors degree and no experience, especially because FIEA helps give a real world experience.
With that I will live you with the 12 days of FIEA
12 Daily meeting requests
11 Hours a month gaming
10 Different ways to say “Here”
9 Final pitches
8 Polished Games
7 Days a week working
6 RPP projects completed
5 Great classes attended
4 Cups of noodles soup
3 All nighters needed
2 Cohort projects selected
1 Wicked program
