Tell us your background and how you became a game designer.
I became a game designer after giving a lot of thought into what I wanted to do with my life. As a kid, I always liked art and the creation of art. So I always thought I would pursue something in art. I did not know what it was at the time, but I knew I wanted to do something creative. At first, I wanted to be a writer so I started writing a lot of stories and loved the process of creating a world. However, as a young child, I did not have a discipline to complete the stories I started. I was dissuaded by my family at the time to pursue such a career. This was due to the unknown nature of the income that being a writer would have provided. I was dissuaded by my family to pursue anything in art. So there was a period where I thought about being an engineer, or a scientist, or really any stable job. However, there was always this nagging feeling that told me not to pursue such a career. I was lost at what kind of career that I wanted to pursue and I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. This was when Game Design came into view.
It came during a job fair at my high school. I was walking around looking at the potential career I wanted to pursue and I saw that Game Design was an option. I became curious about such a career. I started researching what kind of work a Game Designer does. All the points that I found in the research resonated with me. It had a little bit of world creation, a little bit of art creation, and some technical skills. It was the job that was creative yet at the same time was technical as well. This was the one job where I could find ways to persuade my family about this career choice, by saying that I would go into computer programming to go into game design. In the end, I was able to go straight into a game design degree course, but it took some time for my family to warm up to the idea of me being a game designer. This was how I became a game designer.