May 31, 2008

Working Weekend

Well, putting in a 10+ hour day on Saturday never feels particularly good, but I think I managed to get a fair bit accomplished so that's something. I spent most of the day reading level design and environmental psychology articles doing background research for my thesis and then I've spent the last few hours working to get a little ahead on our next LD assignment. Tomorrow I've got to actually take all the research and turn it into a written Field Review for submission to my advisor on Monday. I also have to "research" my role for our the Homestar Runner LARP in my Special Topics class on Tuesday. Yeah, I'm serious, I'm playing Bubs. I think it's supposed to help us understand social games or something like that. The example precedes the lesson so I'm not entirely sure, but it should be fun regardless. The special topics course is definitely all over the place, but just talking with Sandy is interesting so it's a really engaging course.

My LD assignment turned out nice and the Dissonance pitch went pretty well I'd say, but I had to pull two back-to-back late nights which ended up leaving me pretty drained so I spent the rest of yesterday recuperating in my apartment. I also think the My Robot pitch went over pretty well, so hopefully it will make it into the top 5. I think there are plenty of people that dislike it on face, but there are enough people that are really passionate about it that a great team could be put together to work on it. My only worry is that the faculty are looking more at the averages than the actual scores so some of the other pitches may have higher averages, but no one is particularly excited about them. *Shrug* Nothing to be done about it now, just gotta hope for the best. If I get to work on My Robot, Dissonance, or Skies of Lanadia (the sky pirate game) I think I would be pretty happy with how things turned out.

In other news, I officially decided to accept the Gearbox internship yesterday. Shocking, I know. I thought about the alternatives, but the pros were just so heavily in favor of doing it that it ended up being a pretty simple choice. I've been itching to try my hand at real work as I imagine many of the other students have, it's a great opportunity for learning, networking, and some professional experience to put on my resume. I also think it will be, you know, fun, and could help reinforce that I can actually do this job. The project we'd be working on is still in pre-production so we'd get to have a big hand (well...somewhat big) in how the thing actually develops, which is sweet. There's also some modest compensation, which is a nice change of pace from the Guildhall as well. Anyway, I think it's gonna be good for me so I decided to go for it. It's going to take away from time I could spend on my thesis or building portfolio pieces for Bioware or Blizzard, but it feels very much like the right course for me.

Alright, that's it for tonight. Gonna veg some before bed, later!

1 comment:

  1. It seems like the whole idea of forcing you to work on a random project rather then the one you came up with and are passionate about, while not much fun for you is a fairly accurate representation of the industry in general. As is the looking at the averages rather then searching for things that would thrive in a niche. Slim consolation I realize.

    The internship sounds like it will be awesome. Good luck.

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