Hello, Happy People!

Growing up with autism – although it was Asperger's Syndrome at the time – had its upsides & downsides.  Remarkably good memory?  Upside.  Oversensitive hearing?  Downside.  Borderline isolationism?  Downside to some, but I don't mind.  But one of the most profound effects – overactive imagination & creative process – started as a problem but was eventually molded into a skill.

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In the beginning, my career vision was centered on aircraft engineering – the same line of work my father is involved in to this very day.  But around the beginning of high school, I … “snapped”, I guess.  My mind was engrossed in video game designs – some based of existing games, like Mario or Sonic, & some completely original – that even my compulsive pacing & scripting wasn’t enough to release it.  So, I started writing stuff down, and some concepts got to such a level of detail that I became interested in going one step further with them.

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Unfortunately, my high school was not an adequate platform for pre-college exposure to game design; I attempted to squeeze something like that out of our FIRST Robotics Club, but that could only go so far.  So, over the years, I enrolled in various college-provided summer camps; first a one-week day camp at SNHU, then the Champlain Game Academy.  Taken together, those two experiences just turned my world upside down.  My mind was made up, and as testament to newfound resolve, I chose to iterate on a game made at Game Academy for my senior project.

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All in all, game design is more than just a massive money-maker; they’re abstract art.  Being in a virtual space, video games are not bound by many of the natural laws that bind together the real world & our real human society – to put it simply, a character only falls if you make them fall.  The only limits to what you can create as a game designer are the constraints of your technology, your ability to use technology to its fullest potential, and the power of your imagination.

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Furthermore, my imagination was fueled by the video games I play and/or used to play, turning it into the eternal flame I now utilize today.  I want to make games that fuel the imaginations of kids who play them in the same way.