Riley Morrissey

School/Division	Division of Communication & Creative Media
Programs	Game Art Degree
Class	2020
Pronouns	She/Her/Hers
Home State	Vermont
Study Abroad	Montreal, Quebec

What have you learned at Champlain that will help you in the game industry?

I definitely think one of the most important things I’ve learned is hard work. It’s one thing to be good at what you do, but you also have to work hard in order to get to the place where you need to be. It’s been great having professors who are either currently in the industry, or formerly in the industry to help me out with that because they know—more than anyone—what you need to be doing to best position yourself for getting a job after college. And I would also say that my time in Montreal has taught me a lot. Studying abroad was a great experience for a multitude of reasons, but the number one was we had people currently in the industry who would come teach us classes at night.

Can you tell us about the Senior Show?

The Senior Show is something that we work towards our entire time we’re at Champlain, and that’s where everyone gets together and shows off the games that we’ve been making for the whole year. We show our work off to not only our peers and faculty, but to recruiters and people in the industry as well, in hopes of getting interviews afterwards. The game that I’m working on specifically is a VR I-spy game where you’re trying to find different objects around a room and take pictures of them. And that’s been really fun for me so far. I’ve really been enjoying it.

What’s your advice for high school students thinking about going to the Game Academy program?

I would highly recommend it. I think it’s important to know what you don’t want to do as much as what you do want to do, so being able to try that stuff out beforehand rather than just going in head first, not necessarily knowing what you’re doing, I think is super important. Quite a few of the people that I went to that camp with are also still going here, and we’re still friends, so it’s a great way to connect with other students or potential students. It’s a great way to connect with the professors. It’s a great way to see what a class at Champlain looks like. It’s a great little snapshot of Champlain College.