My experience at the Gamestars event in Newcastle | Forums

[rlmergeuser]

So I got the opportunity to help out with the Gamestars event last Saturday and help children between the ages of 8 and 18 get a better understanding of what it is like to work in the industry.

I have been in the industry for less then a year and I'm currently a QC (Dev) over at Reflections, a Ubisoft Studio. I was lucky enough to get this opportunity to help out with the event after chatting to one of the level designers over a few drinks. He knew of my tracks and asked if I would be interested, I immediately said yes .

Overall the day was fantastic, there were a number of workshops going on, which covered aspects such as Art, Code and Level Design (Lego and Trials Evolution). The dev's were all very enthusiastic and were able to demonstrate the different roles in the industry with some great hands on experience. Along side this was a one hour talk which apparently went very well, although I was unable to attend as I was over at the Trials workshop.

I was amazed at how quickly the children got to grips with the editor, we had initially set up a few levels which had some clear level design issues in them, but we soon found that as the day went on, the children just wanted to express their creativity. I remember one child in particular who seemed to know exactly what he wanted to achieve, "I want a ramp to go up here, a big explosion, maybe change the camera abit". I showed him how to achieve this and from then he was adding objects and triggering events all over the place , I just guided him as he went along. He also thought about design sense for example "The ramp looks good, but it looks as though it is floating, maybe something should go there to support it".

Overall the day was superb, the turnout was great and we should all be excited about the future of games espcially if these kids have anything to do with it.

Redlynx post here: http://redlynx.com/community/blog/218

You can find me to the far right of the first picture, the guy with the checked shirt .

Thanks

[Morfyboy]

well done.good for you.these things really encourage n help out massively I think...

[H3X23]

Sounds like alot of fun and glad you have inspired people Congrats on the opportunity. Hope to see some more tracks from you soon it's been a while.

[RetiredRonin]

Awesome job. Wish I could have been there.