Meeting Aaron Walker

               Aaron works at Disney and when he came to present to us he brought a very professional manner to it. His presentation had a seriousness to it as he discussed what we’d be facing in our futures exactly. I enjoyed his presentation due to the fact that I learned what to expect.

                Firstly he explained that learning never stops; a coder must always be ready to expand his knowledge. In most of his experiences he coded in C++, which is the language we are currently studying most. He went on to explain how it is best for someone to find their ‘niche’ spot in coding, whether that is physics, UI development, etc, etc. By having a niche specialty companies and coworkers know exactly what you’re good at and they can rely on you in those aspects. One of his quotes, which I’ll share, also portrayed the importance of handling whatever task is given to you: “To be successful, work hard and do anything they bring to you.” If one is to follow this quote then to be successful one has to be an important asset to whichever company you may be working for; doing so will lead to you getting more responsibilities and trust from your company and people will come to you because you can get the job done.

                Further on in his presentation he explained how his company worked in their creation process. One thing that he made sure to drive home was that every game they created has a crunch time, or a Code Red as they called it. As a developer you must be able to motivate yourself through these times and get the job done; but maybe even more important than that is having something that in the end you’re proud of. If you’re not proud of what you’re doing then you’ll be less motivated to continue. So it is quite important to find that motivation to make something amazing. A good helpful tip he also gave us was to make release versions of our product to test how it runs without all of the debug code holding it together, that way we can foresee any problems that may be experienced in the user’s end result.

                Throughout all of his presentation I learned just how intense the coming jobs would be. I can’t just freely go into a job expecting it to be fun without any hard work. To truly succeed as a Video Game Developer I’ll have to work hard and motivate myself to make a product as great as possible.