About Me
My name is Mike, I am a recent graduate of Software Engineering and looking for work in the field of Game Development as a Gameplay / AI Programmer. I have been passionate about video games all my life, and always knew I wanted to make video games. After years of self teaching myself game development I returned to college in 2020 and now having graduated I'm ready to make my dream of making games a reality!
Gaming
On my third birthday I got my first introduction to gaming, with the original Gameboy and Kirby's Dreamland and ever since gaming has been one of my biggest passions. Growing up I always kept up on all news about upcoming games and console, I had subscriptions to several magazines and always loved reading about the development process. Anyone that knows me knows my love of games, it eventually got me the nickname Game Nerd, I was always the go to for other kids who needed help in games or asking about new games.
I believe gaming is the best medium for story telling, through gaming players can experience things that would never be possible in reality.
Game Development
For as long as I can remember I knew I wanted to make video games. At 11 years old I would spend class time filling the empty portions of my school work with plans for games I wanted to make one day. I would draw out maps, make up lists of mission ideas and items for in the game, I created a mini metroidvania on a scrap piece of paper. While at the time I didn't yet know how games were made, I wanted to learn.
I went to computer and game dev summer camps when I was young and made my first game, an Ocarina of Time 2D side-scroller in Game Maker. In high school I took every tech class there was, during lunch we often had LAN matches in Halo 1 and using a map editor, I created maps for us to play in. Outside of school I spent many hours watching online tutorials. Throughout my whole life I have always done whatever I could to learn how to become a game developer.
Youtube
From 2013-2018, I had a gaming channel (https://www.youtube.com/@gamnrd) on YouTube where I uploaded 670 videos. After having used YouTube since 2005, after a spontaneous trip to Playlist Live in 2013, I decided to finally start creating videos. At the time I was very active on a Minecraft server called MCSG (Minecraft Survival Games) so naturally I started recording my matches. After over 300 Minecraft video I later moved onto recording several playthroughs of other games, then focusing on VR games before eventually leaving YouTube as a result of changes in my life.
In my first year I got over 2,000 subscribers, collaborated with several YouTubers I had watched for years, was even partnered with Maker, a large Multi-Channel Network until they were purchased by Disney. These years were definitely the highlight of my 20's, I made some amazing friends, met and worked with many creators I had watched for years, and traveled to many conventions in Toronto, Anaheim, Orlando, and San Antonio. My experience with YouTube taught me about video and photo editing, self marketing, and networking.
The Arts
Theatre
During the late 2000s, I really got into theatre, over just a few years I was apart of 10 different musicals and also stage crewed several more. Secret Garden, Nunscence: The Nuncracker, Carousel, Little Women, High School Musical: On Stage, Miss Saigon, Cats, RENT, and Jane Eyre.
Choir
I was a part of Kitchener's Grand Philharmonic Youth Choir for a few years during which we preformed many concerts, but easily the highlight was in 2012 when our choir was selected to perform for Video Games Live!
For VGL we got to preform:
- Liberi Fatali - FF VIII
- Korobeiniki - Tetris
- Invicible - Warcraft
- Dragonborn - Skyrim
- Main Theme - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- Still Alive - Portal
- Baba Yetu - Civilization IV