1. When and why did you study at the academy?

I studied at the academy between 2023 and 2024, and that year was the beginning of a new life for me. I joined the academy believing that when I finished I'd be able to make a game, I was able to do so much more than what I thought was possible. Simply making a game was not the only skill I learned, I learned how to program, how to make game assets, how to work in the game engine but most importantly, Adaptability. There are many skills you would need to make a game and all of it I learned at the academy but that's not it, on top of this my year at the academy was an amazing experience, if i had a reason to go back i would.

2. Where are you now?

Currently I'm a co-founder of my own game studio and my team and I are working on making a game and pitching to funders, we already have had multiple opportunities to bring our work to the public in order to get public awareness. The thing about making games is you are constantly learning, you'll never reach a point where you know everything so as a leader I'm constantly learning and adapting to the situations that are happening around me.

3. What is the most important thing you took away from the academy?

Adaptability, Adaptability, Adaptability! At the academy learning to make a game I would say is the easy fun part, you will learn to be able to do that quickly but there is one thing that you will only learn through experience adaptability. That may sound odd but this is something you will understand when you are working on a project. When you are tasked with making a simple game within 1 month you quickly learn just how much time you don't have, especially if you don't plan ahead. Speaking from personal experience we went like 4 days past our deadline and it was completely our fault, But the value behind this is the learning experience. Invaluable.

4. What would you recommend to young students?

Not to sound like a drill sergeant but Communication! Communication! Communication! One thing I found particularly fascinating when at the academy is how easy you fail to communicate. You might be thinking what am I talking about? We do it everyday. How hard would that be? Well let me enlighten you, every single step of developing a game requires communicating with each other and if you're not careful you will end up with many sleepless nights trying to crack this bug, trying to understand who assets are 3 times as big as they should be and days overdue hand in day. I'm not making any of this up again, I went three days and nights straight just programming and I loved every single second.