n the summer of 2011, I rounded up my A levels program in ICT and moved to Birmingham in September to study Computer Games Technology in Birmingham City University. About 70% of the course involved programming, which is basically making games from scratch. In the first year, I was involved in making Flash games, XNA games and MONO games. By the second year, I had acquired more experience in programming and started creating games in Unity using C# and Java Script. Also, I undertook a business module in the second year, and this broadened my horizons even beyond programming. In my final year, I started developing games using C++ and C#. In my dissertation, I examined the ‘Effects of Human Behaviour in Interactive Medium. For this, I created a horror game and took measurements heartbeat before people began playing the game, while playing it and after playing it. I was looking to see how playing games could affect or change human behaviour over the course of time.
In the first year of my studies, I decided to live on campus as I was just moving in from Swansea and had not familiarised myself with the environment. I stayed in Jennens Court because it was only two minutes walk from my Millennium Point Campus where I spent three years. At that point, the campus was new and so all the computer systems and software were up to date. When I initially started, I expected it to be quite difficult to go through the course but my experience was the exact opposite. The course was designed to make it easy for students to go through with and the lecturers were very helpful and friendly. They provided all kinds of support a student would need.
I was researching for universities, which have game related courses. Birmingham City University was one of the universities that offered a comprehensive based computer games technology course. When investigating further into what Birmingham City University offered in the course, I found that the Computer Games Technology course at Birmingham City University had a course structure, which is developed around the games industry.
After considering what course I wanted to do I recognised the diverse option the course provided in which I had the option of choosing to stay in the game industry or transfer my knowledge into different industries such as computer networking, computer business and general IT sectors. Due to the range of aspects the Computer games technology course at Birmingham City University offered I recognised that this course would be the best suitable course for me. Other aspects of the course that contributed to my decision to choose was the strong links of the university with SAS, SAP, Xbox, Samsung, Microsoft and Intel. The Cisco System & Microsoft Academy Centre, which is based at the university and is one of Microsoft top UK University based academies, indicated that this was the right course for me.
Computer Games Programming is one of the best courses that BCU has set in place for students who want to get involved in games development. BCU set the course up in collaboration with top IT companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Unity so that students could gain practical experience of the intricacies of the course. In the first year, students start with basic programming and in the second year, they become more involved in heavy and detailed OPP programming. By the third year, students can be more engaged in developing games even from scratch. Birmingham City University provided lots of very useful fully licensed software’s and hardware devices that students could use for study and practical purposes. The course was also designed to be fun for students as the lecture room / LAB was fully equipped with consoles and screens that students could get engaged with.
My three years in BCU went by really fast and I had an amazing time studying there. Computer Games Programming is by no doubt one of the best course options available to students across the UK who are interested in games programming. The environment did not just impact my academic life but also my social life and I did acquire experiences and knowledge relevant to build a career in my course. The university experience is a big part of my life as I have evolved in various ways including developing my communication skills.
