Sunday, August 1, 2010

My, it has been a long time, too long since I addressed this piece.

Much has happened.

In August of 2009 I moved to Michigan from Oregon to take a position with Muskegon Community College heading up their Interactive Media and Game Design program. Interestingly enough, I have since learned, part of the reason I was selected for this position was my work on Prophesy of Pendor and how I worked with the community members on the TW forums.

Also, needless to say in the last year I have been very busy.

Western Michigan is an interesting place. The culture is not what I am use to from Portland and the silicon forest. It is slower, grounded in blue collar sweat, honest to a fault. What is of keen interest to me is that there are more video game trading stores than grocery stores here.

This is a place of possibilities.

The program I am in the process of creating will have four degree tracks. The first three are designed as transfer programs, and fall under what is termed a Regional Macro Agreement that allows transfer to any four year college in this region. The first three programs are Game Design, Media Arts, and Game Systems Programming. I teach the core classes in Introduction to Game Design, Game Scripting, and the capstone class: Interactive Media.

The last program that I am helping to develop with Dr. Tim Trainor, is a Web Game Entrepreneurial program that combines both the knowledge of interactive media along with key business classes and has ties to local business organizations to assist people who have great ideas, a pathway and help to create their own business and generate those games that they dream about and make a living from it.

Recently I have been given my own 30 minute Television Show that has one program a Month. I am still working on the format for this, and am currently deciding how best to fit this into my overall strategy to make this region of West Michigan, one of the main interactive Media and gaming centers of the United States.

In addition to this, as if this was not enough, I have started a small for-profit development group that is aimed at creating a new type of game. You can get a sneak peak here: http://stariumxcv.freeforums.tv/

This is our development forum and we have secured the domains and are working feverishly to put forth a very unique type of web game.

It has been over 20 years in the design and now it appears that I have the resources and contacts to make this a reality.

Best regards,

Jim