Letter of Intent
People inherently find games entertaining. Most everyone can remember back to their first experience with their favorite video game; racing around the track with Super Mario Kart, jumping on King K. Rool in Donkey Kong Country, or finally defeating Ganondorf in their first Legend of Zelda game. I personally have the fondest memories of trying to find my way through Rock Tunnel and Mt. Moon playing Pokémon Yellow on my Nintendo Gameboy. However, as I grew older, when all my friends were talking about the hidden characters and their exploits in Super Smash Bros. Melee, I was instead going back and beating my favorite games like Pikmin and Luigi’s Mansion for the 10th time, trying to understand how the game worked and what made me love it so much. Instead of looking for new ways to grab my attention, I was trying to understand what made my favorite games so great and why the designers made even the smallest decisions in the game.
Eventually, as I got older, I became more and more interested in game analysis, almost more so than gameplay. I always wanted to know what made a game tick, rather than how to unlock the next playable character. Over the course of a few summers, I was lucky enough to take a summer camp or two and learn the basics of some game creation software, such as Game Maker, but I never really got to create a product I truly was proud of. Finally, in my junior year of High School I was able to start a series of real, high level game programming classes at the local community college. I first took an introduction to C++ class, which is where I developed much of my love for programming and problem solving. This lead into a semester of 2-D Video Game design, where we were able to work on games at the barebones level using Direct-X. My first semester of my senior year I went a step further and took the follow up 3-D game design course. I also was able to share my game programming experience over the summer when I spent two weeks as a camp counselor teaching kids how to create their own games using Game Maker, the same way that I had learned when I was younger.
I hope that Rensselaer’s GSAS program will allow me to further understand the intricacies of game design and storytelling through gameplay. I am passionate about creating games and giving players an experience that they enjoy and want to come back to. I have the programming expertise from my extensive time working on various computer science projects, and with the help and guidance of the Game Design classes at RPI, I hope to create the games that I envision.
Stephen Wood
Eventually, as I got older, I became more and more interested in game analysis, almost more so than gameplay. I always wanted to know what made a game tick, rather than how to unlock the next playable character. Over the course of a few summers, I was lucky enough to take a summer camp or two and learn the basics of some game creation software, such as Game Maker, but I never really got to create a product I truly was proud of. Finally, in my junior year of High School I was able to start a series of real, high level game programming classes at the local community college. I first took an introduction to C++ class, which is where I developed much of my love for programming and problem solving. This lead into a semester of 2-D Video Game design, where we were able to work on games at the barebones level using Direct-X. My first semester of my senior year I went a step further and took the follow up 3-D game design course. I also was able to share my game programming experience over the summer when I spent two weeks as a camp counselor teaching kids how to create their own games using Game Maker, the same way that I had learned when I was younger.
I hope that Rensselaer’s GSAS program will allow me to further understand the intricacies of game design and storytelling through gameplay. I am passionate about creating games and giving players an experience that they enjoy and want to come back to. I have the programming expertise from my extensive time working on various computer science projects, and with the help and guidance of the Game Design classes at RPI, I hope to create the games that I envision.
Stephen Wood