Small Print
A few months ago, I came across a mention in a few blogs that PC Gamer were doing a feature on games development courses at UK universities, and were looking for some opinions from relevent students. With some typically strong opinions about the course in mind, and having vomited the worst of them at unfortunate friends throughout the year, I wrote up my replies to the 15 questions they offered, and e-mailed them off with the least silly-looking photo I could find. I didn’t really expect it to come to anything.
A few weeks later however, I find that my rambling was among the four that were accepted and published in the final feature. Once the novel buzz of appearing in print wore off, I desperately struggled to remember exactly what I’d written – knowing full well that I am prone to getting carried away with my ranting. It quickly dawned on me that a widely-read magazine, complete with attached photo, is not a great place to show people what a giant dick I am.
I grab a coat, nip off to the shops and buy the magazine. I get over the fact that it cost me almost six quid, and spend about two hours trying to rip open the stretchy stuff they wrap it up in. I flick through to find the article, scan the pages for my bit, and spot my Shrek-like mug at the bottom of a page.
I read through it… and it’s not too bad.
[Click image to read, opens a new window]
Some niggling thoughts of mine, reading through it again:
1. The final text that made it to print is an edited version of most of the answers I gave, patched together into standard prose. As such, some of it emphasises stuff a little differently to how I originally intended.
2. I use the word “actually” twice in the first sentence. It reads awkwardly, and sets a bit of an “Ooh look at me, I’m a smart-arsed cock” tone for what follows.
3. Each of the four of us who got our stuff printed come from different courses, at different unis. Mine and another bloke’s lean towards the negative side, while the other two are relatively chirpy and positive. It doesn’t seem fair that readers might judge the universities against each other, on the basis of what is said by a single person for each – particularly as the actual courses being described vary between art, design and coding.
Furthermore, one of the positive accounts was from a student rep for his course [who we could assume will be more positive about things], while I have a general tendency to simply hate everything.
4. I hope I don’t sound too critical of other students on the course. It was absolutely not my intention to say “Ooh look at me, I’m a pretty flower in a sea full of piss”, or anything similar, because, well… I’m not.
5. The Animex festival deserves even more bigging-up than I gave it, as the most recent Animex Game featured guest presentations from Ben Cousins [Lead Designer at Sony London], Jonathan Smith [Lead Designer on Lego Star Wars], Keiron Gillen and Introversion, among many others.
I hear that for Animex 2007, one of the level designers from Valve is going to be making a presentation, and maybe more. Wahoo!
6. OOH LOOK AT ME! I’VE BEEN IN PC GAMER!