Arolf Delano Santos
Internship Experience
I spent several months during my fourth year in my college's internship program. I was able to have my first work experience in the game industry as a game design intern with an outsourcing company called Definite Studios. Its studio is located far from where I live, but because of the 2020-2021 pandemic, I was able to work from home.
Definite Studios is where I spent both my internships in. The culture was very welcoming to its interns and I was able to relax with my duties and my colleagues. During my time, I was able to output some effective design works in the form of analyses. Later on, my fellow interns and I developed a mobile game called Colorful Cycles, where we invested most of our time in.
Analyzing Hyper-Casual Games
Internship 1 (August - December 2021)
In the first part of my internship, my supervisors decided to assign me and a few other interns to a project that involves in developing a hyper-casual game. Being the only intern assigned to the game design department, I was tasked in all parts of research and design. To start, I was told to learn about the hyper-casual genre and its success. Completing this task proved to be crucial as it is a straightforward way for me to learn on the type of game I was supposed to design.
I was able to deliver an effective presentation and impressed my supervisors with my first design task, and so, I was then given a new task in coming up with several concepts for the project.
Using what I have learned as well as my talent for creativity, I managed to come up with ten concepts with some of them having unique twists and one of them using inspiration from one of my previous college projects, Toaster Launcher.
Then I was tasked in narrowing the ideas down to 4 and in better detail, drafting in game mechanics, gameplay, game objects and UI in each.
In the end, me and my group managed to unanimously choose one of the remaining 4 ideas that I have conceptualized. With approval from my supervisors, we were ready to start developing the project in the second part of my internship.
Development of Colorful Cycles
Internship 2 (January - April 2022)
In the sense of a workforce, this was the first time I worked with a group. Even though I have finished researching and conceptualizing the game, I have learned that I was still a crucial asset during a games development, especially since I made the concept for the game. First off, my colleagues and I named the game "Colorful Cycles" and decided to develop it in the Unity Engine.
My overall role then was to oversee the game's development -- if it has met the concept or if there are changes needed. One of the tasks was listing down and checking the progress of all the assets and resources required for the game. As soon as the artists and programmers finish developing them, I then placed and arranged them in the game.
Conclusion
If there was a fault I found during my internship, I could say that my time was quite slow as in the second part of my internship, most of the work is now handed to my fellow interns to develop the assets that I have written down for them.
Regardless, I enjoyed my time as an intern. I had learned that game designing is my desired role in the game industry, I was also able to gain some knowledge on working with fellow employees, even though remotely, and my supervisors were glad with the work I delivered during my time.
Working with the company itself was also fun. During free time, my colleagues and I also had fun by playing multiplayer games together and my supervisors were valuing my comfort and well-being over my output. Overall, this was a good first experience of what is like to work in the gaming industry.