September 1st, 2021
My History with Video Games.
My first memorable experience with video games happened around 2007, when my mother purchased me an Xbox 360. I don’t specifically remember what video games I had for my Xbox, but I do remember I was very excited about it and it made me happy.
A few years later, my mother bought a Nintendo DS Lite for herself to play Super Mario on, but it ended up becoming mine. I do remember having only three games on it for some time. I had the game Gameboy Advanced cartridge for the board game Risk, I had Super Mario Brothers for the DS, and I had a Transformers game. I loved all of those games, and I loved the simplicity of the Nintendo DS Lite, I really with that I still had it so I had a way to play Gameboy games.
I gained my first access to computer gaming in 2014 when my grandmother started letting me use her computer at her house. I was still not allowed to use the family computer in my own home, but any chance I got at my grandmothers, I would play flash games online.
I did not receive any other game console for six more years, up until my Grandmother purchased a Nintendo 3DS XL for me and my cousin in 2013. I remember having that console up until 2019, when I got the Nintendo Switch for Christmas. Throughout the 2010s and into 2020s I have had access to modern versions of the Xbox and PlayStation, and I have had too many games to count.
My Experiences with Software Development
My interests with game development originated in 2014. I had been wanting to play the game Minecraft, but my parents would not buy it for me, my mother disapproved of it because her first experience with it was me being scared by a creeper. So I decided that I would just go and make my own Minecraft.
I had been experimenting with windows batch script for a few months at this point, I understood how to use it to create simple text-based RPGs, chatbots, and other simple programs, so I decided that I would start there and see if there was a way to make a game like Minecraft in a notepad. I very quickly found out that it was possible, but I would not be able to use windows bath, since you can’t exactly create 3D graphics using a command-line scripting language.
I found, through research, that Minecraft had been made in a language called Java. I had never heard the concept of programming languages before, I had no idea how they worked, how to read them, or anything related to it, but I was determined to learn new things. I went to YouTube and started learning, I quickly learned that I needed an IDE to make my life much easier, so I installed Eclipse and JDK 7, which was the modern version at the time. I created a calculator as my first project, skipping the classic “Hello World” program entirely.
Since 2014, I have been expanding my knowledge of Java, and I have expanded into C#, Python, Lua, and some web development. I have tried to teach myself C++, but it has never caught on, and I have been working on teaching myself OS development in raw assembly.
What role do I want to play in the video game industry?
Based on my experiences with game development, playing video games, and just how I feel, I really want to play the role of programmer in the industry. I don’t want to work for the big publishers or the big companies thought, I want to work on the small projects. The projects where everyone in the company knows you personally, where the CEO is not only your boss, but your neighbor or your friend. I want to work with indie game developers and small studios.
I feel that the video game industry relies on the small studios and the indie developers. That is where innovation comes from, from the people who have risks that need to be taken, who don’t have fifteen different review processes a game has to go to before it even reaches testing. I want to be a part of that, I want to be a part of the industrial backbone. After I graduate, I want to work for the federal government in cyber security, but after that I fully intend to either join a small studio, or maybe start my own studio. Maybe I will have a part in the next big indie game.
Gibegy 
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