From the moment I touched down in Singapore, I’ve been on the go trying to organise the NUS Games Development Group (NUS GDG) activities. It’s been a rough three weeks… first, we recruited over 40 freshies in our Welcome Tea (which was held the week after we got back), and then we had to quickly organise workshops and projects to train them. They were pretty much all untrained, so I had to start from scratch. At first, I was Vice President of Projects, but after our VP Events dropped out, I had to try and tackle both responsibilities, and that nearly killed me!
Thankfully, when I was so stressed out about it I couldn’t even sleep anymore, I spent an hour praying and finally got peace in my heart about what God was guiding me to do. The next day, I handed over Projects to the person whom I wanted to be my successor, and took over Events. So now, Bruce (President) and Wei Man (the new VP of Projects) between them will handle all the project organisations, while my responsibility lies in organising events and workshops, with the help of my assistant Brian.
I just gave two sessions of the Introduction Workshop over the last week, covering the basics of game development practices and team roles, and I find that I like the job. I like to lecture and present, and I’m constantly thinking of ways to make my content more clear or interesting. I can definitely see myself lecturing on Game Design in the future, as a university professor. My parents were right… this is a field I’m cut out for. In any case, Prof. Golam Ashraf, one of our society’s advisors, has also asked me to guest lecture for his class on Interactive Media Projects this Wednesday, so I’m preparing my slides for that now. How cool is that? 
I’m now a GUEST LECTURER! A few more steps down the road, and I could become a full-time lecturer (if my other job options don’t steal me away first).
This last weekend, I was also helping to run CONTRAST 2007, our annual 24-hr Game Design Jam that we organised in conjunction with the Communications and New Media student group. It was an… interesting experience. Actually, we faced a ton of hurdles. Back when we were in the States, the GDG comm members we left behind and the CNM comm decided to tie-in with a Bizcom group that approached them to try an organise a large-scale Gaming Fiesta event at Suntec City. Bruce, Alex and I tried to advise against it, since it seemed like the Bizcom people had no idea what they would be getting into, but the CONTRAST organising comm lacked confidence in themselves and so decided to tie in with what they expected would be a support network of related events and more experienced people.
Hah.
Our instincts were right. The Gaming Fiesta organising comm really DIDN’T know what they were doing. Who the heck organises a gaming tournament and game design competition to be held outdoors in Singapore? All the participants were sweating throughout the competition. What’s more, fully 1/4 of the computers they supplied did not work, the electricity was only installed in the morning of the event (which meant that we couldn’t install our software until noon and the whole schedule of events was pushed back by nearly 4 hours), and they were blasting loud music and performances while the competition was going on. How, I ask you, can one concentrate on creating a game in 24 hours when you’ve got music blasting into your ear for 4 hours straight? Last I heard, the Fiesta comm was being sued for not delivering what they promised to another company that decided to tie-in with them, and they were heavily into a budget deficit.
Thankfully, despite all the hindrances, we still managed to pull off a fairly decent competition. 9 teams, 9 games of varying quality. Most of the games were much better than last year’s ones, though. Probably because a large number of the contestants have had some game design training or experience before. I’m pretty happy about it. But I think the entire CNM and GDG comm will never work with Bizcom ever again (IF they somehow manage to survive this fiasco). CONTRAST really was one of the pillars that managed to pull up Gaming Fiesta from being a total flop. I got 4 hours of sleep in 36 hours, but hey… it was fairly enjoyable, actually. I like being able to organise events.
Next up, we’ve got the prize-giving ceremony for CONTRAST taking place during the Games Convention Asia, and I’ve got to prepare for more training workshops for the GDG freshies. I hope that by the time I graduate, I’ll be able to leave behind me a solid cohort of beginner developers who will be committed to the GDG and making games. I’ve got one semester to do it in, and I love the challenge. It’s like my favourite genre of games – complex building and management sims – have come to life in the form of the GDG.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to find a job that’s as interesting as trying to start up and run a student group from scratch? Probably. The one thing I don’t like about GDG is how we’ve only got roughly a 3-4 year time limit before our members have to leave the club. All that time invested in training and development – gone, because they’ve graduated. Still… that’s what student clubs are like. Maybe an actual game company would be better.
