Meet Some of Our Game Design Students

I really enjoy how the game majors are formatted from semester to semester. Each fall semester is mostly individual work within your major and specializations. For example, second-year designers take Game Technology, Principles of Game Design, and a specialization class. Then, all of the majors come together in the spring semester to work in teams for the Game Studio classes. This format really gives students time to learn and then apply themselves in a group setting with their new skills. The Game Studio classes are great for meeting new people and getting to know everyone in the game majors.

My favorite thing about campus is the huge amount of events that the Student Engagement team puts on throughout each semester. My second year, they organized an obstacle course called Grit 'n Wit. In a group of four, we competed in a timed race that included logic puzzles and physical challenges that ran throughout campus. These types of events are always a ton of fun.

Imposter syndrome is a very real problem that most students feel at some point in their time in college. Remember that you're here to learn, and that you don't have to know everything from the start. I didn't even know how to define "Game Designer" when I walked into my first class, and here I am with internships lined up in the future. You can do it.

Video games have always been one of my most cherished passions. It was always my dream to be able to create fun and immersive game experiences that make lasting impressions on players throughout the world. The Game Design major at Champlain was the first step in achieving that dream, and after seeing people have fun playing my games, I can safely say that I've been living the dream with my major!

The Upside-Down Curriculum put me right into the swing of actual game development and design from day one. From my first day at Champlain until the present, I've been learning about how to make game experiences on paper, prototype and iterate on them to receive feedback, and use that feedback to bring designs to life. Without ever having to wait to see if my major was right for me or not, I knew from day one that I was in the right program!

My experience at Champlain has effectively prepared me for a career in the game industry through classes that not only teach design theory and principles, but also require hands-on creation and implementation of ideas and concepts in solo settings and within multidisciplinary teams. The experience I've gained working on games with teammates from different disciplines and walks of life is the real deal, and is quite possibly the closest you can get to actually working in a real game development job!

I was looking through the Princeton Review for top game design schools, and Champlain caught my interest so I had to visit! When I stepped on campus for the first time, I could really feel the career focus at Champlain. The faculty were willing to show me what their classes were working on, and they answered every question I came up with.

I got to make an arcade-style game with a team. It was fun to make and play. The game uses a steering wheel and Wii remote gun to shoot aliens and drive through a wasteland. I have learned so much from this project, and it has been one of my favorite experiences at Champlain.

I was a Student Ambassador on campus for two years. My job taught me how to communicate with people from all walks of life. It helped with my public speaking skills, and I got to interact with important people on campus.

Being thrown into teams and development processes immediately at the start of my college career helped me confirm that game design was something I actually wanted to commit to.  Without having hands on experience, I feel like we wouldn't have the chance to understand our future careers nearly as well, not to mention we wouldn't be as prepared for professional lives after graduation.

There are too many to choose from! One game I worked on in the spring of my junior year was a survival game called Lymantria Dispar. It offered me a fascinating challenge when it came to developing and implementing a narrative that, while it wasn't the focus of the gameplay, really added to the game and improved replayability. I might have torn my hair out a bit trying to develop a variable narrative based on the order players picked items up in, but I was very proud of my work at the end.

After my sophomore year, I interned at Rooster Teeth as the ScrewAttack Writing intern, which meant I contributed to a bunch of scripts that were being published to their YouTube channel (which is now named DEATH BATTLE!). I was able to write solo pieces even as an intern, and when it came time for me to go back to school they kept me on as a contracted writer, which is something I'm still doing! 


The fall of my junior year, I went abroad to Montreal and interned with Double Stallion as one of two Game Writing Interns. This meant I got to research for their IPs as well as contribute to not only their games' story and flavor, but also help out with their social media by writing tweets! If you happened to follow that company and you saw a bunch of cryptic tweets about the enemies from their gam,  Speed Brawl, taking over the world... that was the interns!