Grace is a sophomore at Dartmouth College doing game design, development, and research at Tiltfactor
There’s a reason computer science majors are stereotyped as being socially awkward. It’s because we are. That’s why when I started working at Tiltfactor, the one part of the job I was not sure I could handle was the communication with other people. It is also the area of the job that I have learned the most from.
One of my main responsibilities this term has been recruiting professional developers to work with us to transform our Virtual Reality game prototype “Entangled” into a full demo.. The procedure is usually a lot of back and forth emails and video calls, so when I tell my friends outside of the lab about this, they first look at me in sympathy, sure I must be bored. The truth is that I’m really not.
This internship is rare in that I feel like I actually have a say in the direction of our project, I am individually responsible for contacting and assessing these developers, a rare amount of responsibility for a college student. In addition, the people who I talk to over Skype are professionals good enough to have started their own companies. Just this week I spoke to a female developer in Brazil. Despite some language barrier, we were able to effectively communicate and build a connection over our mutual excitement for the project. Furthermore, I was able to communicate effectively each aspect of the game we’ve already developed, what we wanted to be improved, and why we were doing it. When I first started here I did not have the confidence or organizational skills to do that, and I’m grateful I have had the chance to develop both. I hope to keep working at Tiltfactor, and keep developing valuable skills.