Who knew?

So, I was bored last night as 1) I had finished all my homework and postings for the week, and 2) there was nothing good on tv, so I started looking at old emails I had gotten from the college. A lot of them were invitations to workshops on career planning and such, and one was an invite to the Game Club that they have.

Well ... as an avid gamer (and a recoering World of Warcraft junkie), I had put almost all of my gaming on hold as I do through school. I will play the ocassional board game (I belong to a Bloodbowl League), and once a month hold a game night, but that's it. I do have an Xbox 360 that is seeing very little use, and that is because I want to devote my time to learning and developing my new career choice.

Imagine my surprise when I check into this club and find out that it is devoted to getting students immersed into the field of game development. Most companies will take a person who has a degree, but they also prefer someone who has worked on some games that have been shipped (completed and in circulation) already. So this club puts together teams of programmers and artists to get them going and possibly get out 3-6 games over the next three years. And here I thought they were people setting up virtual game nights to play World of Warcraft! It is funny because the first thing they say is if you are serious about joining this club that you need to cancel your World of Warcraft account because you wont have any time to play. So ...

I joined!

This coming Tuesday I will be attending a round table of all the club members. I will also be attending a meeting of all of the artists to see what that is about. It's even funnier to know that I was pretty clueless as to exactly .... EXACTLY .... what my degree would teach me. Its in "Game Art and Design", which is jsut the ART side of building a game. The other side is PROGRAMMING, and truth to tell, I have an ART background and no real experience with programming, so I fell into my niche. It was an accident, but maybe I have someone looking out for me.

So ... I have been told to treat this as just another class, but with more deadlines and such. I will be attending meetings and joining a team and hopefully get a game or three out. I will mark posts related to the game club as Game Club so people who want to track those seperately can.

Is this exciting or what?