Don’t Limit Yourself To The Classroom
For anyone who has not been able to keep up with the Princeton Review rankings, one of our highest ranked programs just so happens to be our game design and development program run by both the school of Digital Design and the Information Technology Program. We’re ranked 22 out of 150 schools in the country. We’re also the number one game design school in New Jersey, beating out programs in The College of New Jersey, which has a yearly high school game design contest, and big-time rival Stevens Institute of Technology. While NJIT has a great curriculum which prepares students for jobs in the real world in game design and development, a lot of credit for our top 25 ranking has a lot to do with the help of proactive students willing to spread their knowledge of game development with each other along with the other resources and opportunities provided to students for enhancement of skill set and experiences.
Last Wednesday in room 1100 of the Guttenburg Information Technology Center, the ACM Game SIG held a lecture about one of the most popular free game engines out on the market, Unity3d. Because involvement in Unity3d looks good on a resume, this lecture attracted an unexpectedly large crowd of students seeking to improve their game development experiences.
The lecture talked about some of the basics of Unity3d, its asset management, and its simple coding implementation. The lesson project was a simple level that highlighted the ease of creating full landscapes with a playable character and camera that showed off the particle systems and the simplicity of coding a rocket launcher in a 3d space. The information did not delve far into how unity works but witnessing the creation of the project brings up an important point about a group of students teaching and learning from each other.
In order to get into college, we all had to work hard in school. Now that we are in college, the goal is to earn a job. But, how does one get that job? How does one follow their dreams? With all sorts of things available to us in this day and age, it’s more than just getting good grades. It’s all about trying to stand out and making a name for yourself. You have to put yourself out there; by getting involved on campus, you learn things that the classroom won’t teach you.
As shown from the crowd that wanted to learn Unity3d, this isn’t a secret. Education outside the classroom is a must for anyone in any major. In order to gain the skills to make the games you want to make, you have to start from the bottom and work your way up.
