My Story

In the Beginning

So my story starts as alot of others do, Working at a crap factory job not knowing what to do with myself. I was a highschool drop out who got my GED and was just on cruise control for the past couple years working odd jobs. I knew this was not what I wanted, but I was stuck in a phase of uncertainty and confusion.

This is when I got a call from my good buddy, telling me about a school that reached out to him called Toronto Film School. They had a video game program and wanted him to check it out. Since at the time I was the one out of the both of us that had a vehicle, he asked me to come along and check out the school with him. I figured why not, and we jumped in my car and drove 3 hours to Toronto.

We got to the school, and took a tour around the campus and learned about the program. I knew right then and there this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to create something that someone can engage with and enjoy. I knew I had the math skills for it, and I knew I had the passion. So I enrolled to the next semester then and there, and found a basement of someone house to rent. I paid the 18 months in advance, which was how long the program was.

Toronto Film School

The experience was amazing. I took the Video Game Design and Development program. This showed me game design theory, but also how to code gameplay features. The course built you up to the final capstone project, which was to greate a game demo with all your fellow students to present to peer downtown! We were able to select from a variety of movie scripts made by students in the film program to make a game out of! It was a unique experience because we went through the whole process of concept, design, implementation, and presentation! One of my most memorable experiences was actually having students from the acting program do voice auditions for our game!

It was also challenging, being there was only 2 programmers left in our term, I had to carry an enormous amount of responsibility to deliver a final product to present. I spent countless hours working to create player mechanics, AI enemies, and a stable UI. It was all worth it at the end, as we were able to present our final game called Capstan Gate. You can find a gameplay preview of it here.

It was not perfect, and definitely had signs of incompletion, but overall the game ran and provided an experience. It was something we all can be proud of to show as our first attempt at a game! I learned so much through it not just from a technical standpoint, but through team work and collaboration as well.

Fanshawe College

After graduating, I came home eager to find a job right away to work on some awesome game! I had a couple interviews, but they did not go so well. What I realize is although I went to school and learned programming, I only really knew how to program within the game engines we were taugh (Unity and Unreal). I lacked some fundamentals, and the confidence in them. This lead to me deciding to go back to school to Fanshawe for the Computer Programmer Analyst program.

Here, I learned the basics of programming in various languages (Java, C++, C#, JavaScript, etc.). I also learned about databases, web development, and everything I possibly could think of. However, what made this course so great was the co-op placement they offered. I can not stress this enough, but atleast 80% of what I learned during this program came from the workplace co-ops that I had. Being able to spend 4 months at a job and basically get your hands on a production code base was invaluable.

This is where my interests for web development grew, and I knew I could see myself being either a game, or web app developer. And just as people told me, as soon as I graduated I landed a job right away.

Work Work Work

Since school, I have been apart of some great teams working on awesome projects! These ranged from full-time jobs working on web application, to helping former students start their own indie game studio! I even got to design, develop, and publish my own app under their name! It has since been taking down, but to see a project start to finish is something I am very proud of, and I learned so much from.

Now I am just continue to grow. I have made a gameplan of the skillsets I want to have, and try my best to learn them and get certifications. My goal is to become an experienced Web and Game Developer who specializes in Front-End, UI, and gameplay! So that has put my focus on things like Unity, Unreal, C#, C++, JavaScript, React and Node! But I am also opening the door to cloud base solutions like AWS and GCP so I have have some full-stack experience as well. I am making progress, but know there is always room to grow!

Conclusion

If you had read this far, thank you very much! I appreciate you taking the time to get to know more about me. One final take away is no matter what, make sure you enjoy what you love. My dad was a Landscaper. He did not make a ton of money, but he was so happy with what he did. And he always told me being able to take a step back and look at your creation and know "I did this" was everything for him to keep going. And I am happy to say thats excatly how I feel in my career right now!