Imani Peters can trace her passion for game design back to an early experience with Roblox Studio. “My dad worked in IT and he would fix old Thinkpad laptops and give them to me and my younger siblings. So in my free time I would search on Google for online virtual worlds and I’d find games like Club Penguin, ToonTown, etc. It wasn’t until, believe it or not, I stumbled across Roblox that I got an interest in game design.”
The junior Game Design and Development student has wanted to create her own video games ever since.
“After seeing that I could make my ideas come to life and have people play my game, I knew that I wanted to make an actual video game when I was older. That’s still my goal to this day and I really want my first big game to be made in the Unreal Engine so that’s what I am working towards currently,” Peters said.
Peters was torn between a few colleges that offered game design programs but ultimately when she saw the plan of study for the game design track at IU Indianapolis (then IUPUI) in the Department of Human-Centered Computing, she was sold. “Seeing courses like Game Psychology, History of Video Games, and Character Design were all things that I was interested in knowing more about so I knew this was the place I needed to be at,” she said.
Practical hands-on learning experience
One game she is really proud of working on is The Mystery of Vee Island. Her team partnered with the Indiana Crane Naval Base to create a pixel pirate game and she was a game designer, voice actor, and an art lead for the project. “We had to take a nine-page document full of wordy multiple choice questions on systems engineering, something we all knew nothing about, and turn it into a fun game that people could learn from,” Peters said. “It was definitely a learning experience for everyone involved but I think the whole team really delivered in the end! We even showcased the game at Indy PopCon and I dressed up as a pirate. It was awesome!”
“I think working with Crane on the Mystery of Vee Island stands out to me the most. Prior to taking this class I had never thought of making an educational game, I honestly thought it would be boring to create games in that genre. But after working on the project I realized that you can make fun games no matter what the concept is. You just have to be passionate and willing to keep trying things when something doesn’t work out.”
Outside of school, Peters has interned with an up-and-coming game company called Ruach Entertainment, where she worked on a tower defense mobile game set in ancient Israel. She did voice acting for one of the heroes in the game and was an art lead for a year. Peters said, “It was super fun and it was my first time being a part of a multidisciplinary game development team. I had to learn how to communicate between the different development teams and the whole experience refined my leadership and communication skills. It also gave me knowledge that I could apply to my courses here at IU Indianapolis.”
Challenging mindsets and changing future plans
Peters said that her professors have done a great job in preparing her for the industry, specifically Matthew Powers. “He’s extremely knowledgeable on everything to do with games and he’s a fun teacher. He also does a great job in challenging your mindset as a game designer. One instance that sticks out to me the most is when I took his Game Psychology class. Prior to taking that class, my mindset was purely focused on making video games, and when you think of a game developer, that’s what most people think, they make video games. It never dawned on me that I could create board games or card games as well. So taking the class was really fun and informative for me and now I am definitely open to creating my own board game in the future,” she said.
She also wanted to give a shout out to Zeb Wood, who she said is really big on breaking perfectionism, which is something that she struggled with a lot as an artist. However, taking his Organic Modeling class really helped her to let go of perfectionism. “The focus in his class was on iterating quickly and there was no pressure to create the best looking 3D model on your first go,” Peters said. “In our assignments, we had to make the same 3D model three different times, for one hour each. Once the hour is over, wherever you stop is where you stop and you have to do the same thing again for another hour. I was genuinely surprised by how fast I was able to improve at 3D sculpting using that method, and I want to use that workflow when it comes to developing games as well.”
Peters’ future career plan is to form her own game studio and make the games of her dreams. She has a lot of ideas that she can’t wait to bring to life in the near future, she said. Her advice to other prospective game designers is to have fun. “It’s not every day you can say that you’re going to school to make video games so make the most of it and make connections with others in the field.”
Media Contact
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