I was born in November 1996 and live in Monmouth County, NJ when I'm not in New York for college
Why are you studying games?
I feel like games have always been there for me and as such I love them a lot. I wasn't always sure what I wanted to do with my life but when I started looking at colleges and I saw Game Design as a potential major things just started clicking. Despite how challenging making games can be I always seem to enjoy the experience. I know that I made the right choice and there is nothing I would rather be doing.
Describe your favorite project made by a classmate.
In my Intro. to Game Design class when we were doing Narrative games one group had a this amazing open ended story-telling game that was a lot of fun. Essentially each player was given a set of cards with items and points and they would have to tell a story that included two of the items to gain points. However, they only gained the points if the majority of the other players thought that the story was good and believable. Whether by design or not what ended up happening was that the players started piggybacking off of each other's stories, which had this really cool collaborative narrative effect.
Describe your most embarrassing playtesting moment.
That would easily be in Games and Players. Nothing extreme happened but for an assignment we had to bring one of the MFA's games out into the wild and try to get random people to play it. My partner and I decided to go to the Brooklyn Public Library for this assignment since the MFA student requested we try to get a wide age range of testers. Now going up to kids and their parents and asking if they would like to play a game has enough bad context as it was but at least then you got a response. The amount of times people just ignored us and kept walking was very disheartening. We ended up celebrating every time we got a play tester something which might have made people look at us a bit oddly. Regardless the experience was full of awkwardness but I'm glad I had it since it has helped me a whole lot going forward.
What's your secret weapon?
I'm wildly creative. I do a lot of world building in my spare time and that is ultimately what seemed to fit when I decided to become a Game Design Major. I have a lot of ideas and I don't want to keep them to myself anymore.
What do you hope to accomplish after school?
In truth I'm not really sure what my next step will be. I know somewhere down the line I want to be making games with the worlds I have created but I realize that I may not be able to do that right away. I could work by myself and for myself but I'm not sure if that's what I want to do. I have fantasized about working at some of my favorite game developers. I'm not afraid to pay my dues and work my way up the ladder if that ends up being the case.
