3 Tips to Become a More Well-Rounded Employee

NSCC Truro Tech Connection Takeaways

On January 30th, 2020, I had the chance to attend NSCC Truro Tech Connection and had a wonderful experience. The event attracted a lot of NSCC Game Development students, and it was a great opportunity to create network and learn from industry experts.

By the end of the event, I learnt 3 key qualifications that are most expected from game development employees

1.    Never Sacrifice Integrity

In the opening keynote, David Mackenzie shared his fun and insightful personal experience, drawing from his 8-year career with Lockheed Martin, about the life cycle of a software engineer. He highlighted any situations could happen at work, but you should never give up your integrity. Because being truthful is a foundation to build strong, lasting connection with other team members.

David Mackenzie (left) from Lockheed Martin Canada and me (right) after his insightful keynote.

2.    Respect Other’s Work

In a panel about the daily life of a game developer moderated by Sam Robichaud, an NSCC faculty member. The panelists are game developers from prestigious companies such as Ubisoft, Jam Filled Entertainment, Cold Furnace Studios, and Alpha Dog Games. They talked about how they dealt with stress and team communications. They all advised that you should learn to respect other’s works. Communicating with your team members before making any changes to their works helps build trust and reinforce mutual respect.

The panelists and the moderator

From left to right:

Patrick Berrigan - Programmer at Ubisoft Halifax

Mark Cappello - Creative Producer at Jam Filled

Sam Robichaud - Game Development Instructor at NSCC Truro

Matt Englehart - FX Artist at Alpha Dog Games

3.    Accept Criticism

“Embracing constructive feedback” seems to be a crucial element that it was mentioned repeatedly from session to session, from industry experts to alumni. Game development involves quite an amount of creativity, and sometimes receiving criticism can be hard. However, criticism is never meant to be taken personally. It’s part of the working process to improve the project’s outcome. Once you understood the nature of that, you would crave for more.

There were so many good sessions that I wished I could have been in multiple places at once. I hope you learnt something from my takeaways. Thank you for reading and you’re welcome to discuss further in the comment section.