Where Inspiration Began

I have been playing video games ever since I can remember. I've played consoles from the Nintendo 64 to the Xbox One. I've played several PC games as well. My childhood was practically built around video games. I played almost every day. It was one of the things my dad and I bonded over ever since I was a kid. The older I got and the more I played the more I became curious about how they worked and how they were made but I had never done anything about the curiosity until middle school.

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In middle school I found a website to build your own games. It wasn't anything publishable, just little games you could make using things already coded on the website, but nonetheless it sparked my curiosity all the more. After finding this website however, I hadn't gone too much further into anything about game design. Eventually, came the time to discuss my future and college. I had never really planned to go to college to be perfectly honest, and the times I had debated doing so, I wasn't even sure what I would go for. What degree would I even want to pursue?

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I remember the first time I'd seen a college convention at my high school in my junior year. My foster mother at the time had wanted me to plan to go and the booth for a university caught my attention as they talked about game design. I don't know why I had never thought about it before being that video games were such a big part of my life. They helped me escape to other realities better than the one I was stuck in. After reading the brochure about the degree for game design from the university booth I thought maybe that's what I would do. However, life had other plans for the time being.

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Eventually during my senior year of high school Full Sail had reached out to me about their game design program. They explained that I could take the courses online and that I could earn my bachelor's degree at least, and eventually move on to my master's if I so chose to. At the time, the master's program couldn't be completed online, so I was just going to start with the bachelor's. However, yet again, life got in the way. But, after some time, and moving halfway across the country, someone spoke to me about attending college. At the time, I was taking an educational break due to the high-stress of everything I was dealing with personally, and did not even want to think about college. However, after Full Sail had reached out again, I got really excited after talking to the recruiter and decided maybe I could do this.

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A couple months later I started my classes with Full Sail University online to purse a Bachelor's degree in game design. From the very beginning, I was beyond excited, and couldn't even imagine what all I would be able to learn about the process of making games. I had originally thought I'd only learn a couple aspect, like maybe it would strictly only focus on the art, or strictly on level design, or strictly coding, only to find out that I was going to be learning basically everything from the ground up about making video games. I've never been so in love with something in my life, the way that I am with creating video games. One day I hope to be able to publish some of my games as an indie developer, and maybe one day become part of a big team as great as the team I worked with towards the end of my classes to create some amazing games to help others find an escape like I did.

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I've had a few people who tried to talk me into going into something more "practical" like cybersecurity because they didn't think a degree in video games would get me anywhere, and let me tell you, I wouldn't change what I chose to do for the life of me. Nothing has ever made me happier than the feeling I get while watching my dreams come to life when I'm coding a game, and creating the level from paper to prototype. Nothing has ever brought me more peace and more feelings of accomplishment than this. I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Video games are something I've always been passionate about ever since I was a child, and they will always and forever be a part of my life until the day I die.