This week saw the start of a couple of things.
First up, it saw the start of this, my final year of university. Hard to believe that I’m now on the home stretch. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was taking an SAT test to see if I could even apply to go to uni, let alone be two thirds done.
Of course, this being the final year the gloves have come off and we are playing sheep stations! Well, almost. A large part of this year is our 3rd Year Game Project. This class runs over both semesters and by the end of this semester we will need to submit a completed and playable prototype. This will then be used to build the final submission version of the game at the end of second semester. Not a small task by any means. This is also a group project and there have been plenty of horror stories of groups imploding in the past, so we have plenty to keep us on our toes.
The second thing was that I was selected to do an internship as one of my subjects this semester. The call had been put out just before Uni went back asking people if they were interested to reply, answering a few questions and providing a link to their portfolio as well as a copy of their CV. We talked about it at home and decided that at the very least it was worth going through the process, so I took the plunge and sent everything off. A couple of days later I got an email from my university saying my details had been sent off to a studio and that they would be in touch with me if they wanted to schedule an interview. Skip to the following week and I get an email from the studio on the Monday asking if I can come in for an interview on the Tuesday. Of course, it being holidays still I have plenty of time and I say yes so we schedule it in.
Wow. I got an interview. That is so cool. The email didn’t say what role they were considering me for, but that’s ok. The fact that they wanted to talk to me was brilliant as far as I was concerned. So over the next day or so I sorted out my portfolio, which was a bit hard as I didn’t know exactly what to take to show them. So I grabbed a bit of everything, some of my art, my photography, my writing, voice acting, anything that I thought would be valuable. I also started to experience something I hadn’t felt for a long time - nerves. I was going off to be interviewed for an internship position by a game developer, and the last time I had a “job” interview was almost a decade ago.
I don’t like to be late, I never have. I’ll leave to be somewhere with plenty of time to get there. When I was working, I used to leave home to get to the office at least half an hour before I was scheduled to “clock on”. It gave me a chance to get settled, have a coffee, read my emails, plan my day as best I could and get my head in the right place before getting on with it. I employ the same strategy going to Uni and I did the same here. My interview was scheduled for midday, I pulled into the carpark and got off my bike at 11:15. I’d had a really good run in. So, what to do for 45 minutes? Thankfully, there is a pub just down the road, so I wandered down there for a nice long glass of lemonade and killed half an hour watching the cricket on TV before heading back up to the studio.
While I was waiting in reception the Human Resource manager wandered out and sat down with me. We chatted for the next fifteen or twenty minutes until the guys doing my interview were ready and then away I went. The interview went well I thought, the guys were interesting and I felt happy with how things had gone. I also found out during the interview that they had me pegged for design or production and I felt that my strengths leant toward the production side of things given that I’d fulfilled that role on two projects last year, and I said as much. Then the half hour was up and I was on my way, waiting to hear back from them to find out if I’d been successful or not. We’d been told in an earlier email that decisions would be made quickly and we would know as soon as possible as if we were successful it would probably require the dropping of an enrolled class to take on a new one.
Skip forward to Thursday. My family and I are down at Gold Coast airport waiting to board a flight to Sydney to go to a wedding the following day. My Razer Nabu smartband had arrived the previous day and I was wearing it when it buzzed while we were in the airport newsagency. I checked the display and it was an email from the studio. I pulled my phone out and checked my email.
I’d been selected! I’m not ashamed to admit that I let out a bit of a whoop and a fist pump right there. Which of course made my wife look at me like I was from some other dimension. Right at that moment though, I was on top of the world. I’d been selected to be a part of the program as the producer. I emailed back while we were standing in the queue to board the plane, gratefully accepting the offer to join the program and acknowledging that I’d be available the following Wednesday for the first group meeting.
And so it came to pass on that Wednesday, I along with my three colleagues from Griffith University became the newest participants in the Halfbrick Academy. For the next 14 weeks we will be working one day a week at the studio on a project set by them. We will be graded, we will have to write a report on what we’ve achieved along with a few other tasks. To say I’m over the moon about this would be a complete understatement. I have the opportunity to work with people in a well known and successful studio, to learn as much as I can AND be able to put what I learn into use immediately.
One thing I know though, you’d better hang on, cause this is gonna be one hell of a ride!
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