Janet Fisher

	Me and Dad, circa 1975. Smartass tendencies thinly veiled.
	Mickey Mouse's Castle of Illusion, circa 1990
	The Incredible Machine, circa 1993
	The Neverhood, circa 1996
	The Sumo mini-game in Fuzion Frenzy, circa 2001
	Second Life, circa 2003
	Viva Pinata!, circa 2006
	World of Warcraft, circa 2010
	My Simon-type game, Xbox 360 version, circa 2007

Short History 

Employers who work in the video game industry often ask prospective candidates about the games they've played, and how they've prepared for a career in the gaming industry. This page answers those questions.

My interest in games began in the 80's when I had PET Commodore, loading programs off cassette. I played a race-car game obsessively, and used code from a magazine about Basic to program a psychiatrist-style text game. The "graphics" in the race-car game consisted of scrolling slashes, carats, etc, and they were surprisingly effective.

Since then, I've played the following games:

Genre	Games
Action	Soul Calibre on Xbox. (I'm not allowed to play when there's company because I swear too much.) UnReal Tournament on a PC.
Adventure	Myst and The Neverhood on a PC.  (Also considered puzzle games.) Harry Potter on Xbox. Bioshock on Xbox 360. Kya on Playstation.
Casual	Return of the Arcade, Entertainment Pack, and random downloads like Bejewelled on a PC.
Educational	The Incredible Machine on a PC.
Exergame	Dance Dance Revolution on Xbox.
Maze	Q-Bert on a tabletop mini arcade machine, and on a Nintendo NES. Frogger on Xbox 360 (downloaded).
Party	Fuzion Frenzy on Xbox. (VERY addictive. I even wrote an essay on it.)
Puzzle	Tetris on PC, Super Nintendo, and in the local arcade. JawBreaker and GameBox Jems on a Pocket PC. Pandora's Box on a PC. Portal on a Xbox 360.  (Recently, my hubby and I got to playtest co-op play on Portal 2.  It was AWESOME!)
RPG	World of Warcraft on a PC. (This is my current favorite! I am a Druid named Pookiepants.) Viva Pinata! on Xbox 360.
Scroller	A first person sword-fighter game (possibly Magic Sword) on an Amiga 1000 (the unfortunate model). A Mickey Mouse game called Castle of Illusion, and Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis. Yoshi Topsy-Turvy on Nintendo Advance SP.
Social	Second Life on a PC.
Text	Wishbringer on a 386 PC.
Traditional	Freecell and Scrabble on a Pocket PC. Bicycle Board Games on a PC

I've also spent many hours in arcades and pubs playing pinball and 8-ball and I'm very fond of playing RoboRally, Scrabble, Fluxx, and Cranium in real life.

To prepare for a gaming career, I spoke to as many people as I could find who were in the industry, learning what was important, such as reading GamaSutra and GameStudies, playing games (like those above), attending talks (like Lifestyle Gaming presented by David Vronay, numerous talks given by Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software, and attending WIGI). I've also spent time writing down game ideas, and I implemented a Simon game on my own using both Microsoft Expression Blend and XNA. (I have posted several times about my experience with XNA on XNA Creators Club Online as "janetfi".)

In 2007, I completed a Digital Gaming certificate program at BCC that focuses on game design. The program included the following courses:

• History of computer games.
• Game art.
• 2D game design using Macromedia Flash and ActionScript 2.0.
• 2D animation using Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, and AfterEffects.
• 3D polygon graphics, 3D animation, UV mapping, texturing, rigging, and exporting objects in Alias Maya 7.
• Game level design using the Unreal Tournament editor (UnrealEd 2004).
• C++ and algorithm design. (I studied this before in University, but I took a C++ course at BCC as a refresher to prepare for learning DirectX).

In terms of my career goals, I'm interested in working on casual, educational, or wildly intense games, or on documentation that allows programmers to create these games. In the long term, I want to be proficient in game design (algorithms, story-telling), 2D and 3D graphics, level designers, and XNA; using what I know to work on cool teams developing cool games!

In my spare time, I'm collaborating with friends on designing and developing simple educational games in Silverlight 3, and 3D levels in Unreal 3.  My current major project is a learning game in Silverlight 3 called Emeralda.  I'm working with a local artist, Bill Ritchie, who has decades of experience as an art instructor at the University of Washington.  Emeralda will teach the skills and theory of etching and print-making, providing an environment where the player can safely make mistakes with etching chemicals, and providing "Macgyver moments" to encourage ingenuity and break down functional fixedness. We made a trailer using SecondLife, and I'm keeping a record of our progress in a blog.  I'm now working on a rough Silverlight demo that we can use to debate the design.