BY ADITH NATARAJAN
The Game Design program, which was introduced at Sheridan four years ago, is the only program of its kind in Canada, making it a popular destination for international students.
“The program is really great,” said Saahil Dhar, a second-year international student. “Learning things I didn’t even imagine existed and the program tackles all aspects of designing games, even though students have to work on their specializations on their own time too if they want to be successful.”
According to students, game designers need to start adapting to various pressure and challenges.
Video games are fun to play, but hard to create. It takes about an hour on average to develop a “wall” in a game. Students in this program say they spend sleepless nights in the Game Design classrooms at Sheridan to finish a project successfully.
“The only way to make games well is to make bad games first,” said Dylan Carew, a second-year class representative of his section. “The teachers want us to make a lot of our ‘bad games’ here, so we can get it out of our system. This helps us to know what goes into a good game.”
Students taking a break in the arcade room at the SCAET building. (Photo by Adith Natarajan/Sheridan Sun)
Their hard work paid off couple of months back when a group of Sheridan students created a game called Arrow Heads, and was showcased at E3 – one of the biggest video game trade shows in the world, which takes place every June in Los Angeles.
These designers also formed a club a year back called Game Design Society”. It was begun by third-year student, Zack Wolf whose t he game was showcased at E3.
“The Game Design society allows the students to show off their games and actually get other people playing them because games are really hard to show off you can’t just put them in a display case because you need controllers and players and we need to explain to them how it works,” said Wolf.
The game design society meets frequently in B Wing by the Tim hortons.
Video games are a huge collaboration between programmers, graphic designers, game designers, artists, and producers. Each of which makes a very specific contribution to the final product.
