Hello World

// Filed under: Life on Tuesday April 03rd 2007, 10:13 pm

So hey, somebody graduated on Monday night. Was it you, Tim? Why, yes it was! I may now officially refer to myself as Tim Colwill, BSc. (Games Technology), which I think we can all agree has a much better ring to it than Tim Colwill, Undergraduate Machineslave. Of course, being a graduate of the presitigious Murdoch University comes with several rights and responsibilities, not the least of which is to sit through about twenty solid minutes of Discoverers Welcome advertisements for the university we just graduated from. Yes, Murdoch, we all know you’ve just paid a couple million dollars for some designers to develop a new corporate image for you - and frankly, it was about time you got rid of the “Brilliant!” slogan that it must have taken all of 10 minutes to cook up in your smoke-heavy multimedia rooms - but, hey, and this may come as a surprise - we just graduated from you. Reminding us again of exactly how great our former university is, is probably a slightly less than worthless procedure.

But that aside, it was a most excellent night. We retired to the Moon Cafe to try our hand at consuming an entire Moon Burger - each. Not a small feat, and definitely one to cull the weak from the strong. Needless to say, I was the only victor, the others complaining of intestinal bleeding and “Jesus, Tim, you’ll fucking die, just stop, man, you’ve proved your point”. And I had.

It’s definitely a weird feeling, this graduated-thing. I mean, I understand that it is, on a theoretical level - very important. But… I don’t feel as if anything has changed, pretty much at all. I still talk to the same lecturers, I still go to the same university - albeit for work, instead of study… hell, I spend all weekend at the GO3 Expo staffing the Murdoch University stand there. The only thing that’s changed is that none of us are screaming about incoming deadlines and impossible game requirements. So basically, I don’t really know what to think.

Of course, one of my first acts as a graduate was to receive a rejection letter from Interzone Games, the new company setting up shop in Perth. While they are hiring, it’s only for people with years of industry experience under their belt. Of course, this might be a somewhat difficult proposition given the fact that Perth has absolutely no games industry from which to draw this experience, but at any rate I am left with two options, one distinctly desperate, and the other distinctly frightening. I can either sit around and wait for the inevitable lowering of standards, or emigrate Eastwards towards the sort of bustling metropoli that I, a small-town Perth boy, finds innately terrifying.

So, it looks like I’ll be moving interstate, then.

I don’t know when, or where, but from this point on, it’s pretty inevitable, and that frightens me a bit. I still live with my parents, as I have for the past 21 - nearly 22 years. The idea of both moving out AND moving interstate in one fell swoop is one that will need a lot of serious thinking about, and all I really want to do is play video games and spend time with my girlfriend.

Bah, it’s all too hard.

// 8 Comments

8 Comments »

1. Kitta says:

   April 4, 2007 at 12:22 am

   Was Go3 any good? I was going to attend, but had a nasty cold and didn’t feel like fanboys mistaking me for a Dead Rising booth babe, the only photographic evidence I have seen on Flickr is of cosplayers and lanboys.

   My brother is facing the same predicament when he graduates; to move or not to move. He’s currently working on developing his own game while doing his last year (and not sleeping because of it) and plans to tinker with that a bit when he graduates and then move east or overseas.

   You could always go nuts and move to Asia or US of gun A.

2. Tim says:

   April 4, 2007 at 7:05 am

   GO3 - well, the conference was great, but the exhibition was god-awful. It was basically a bunch of mish-mash nerd-related shit jammed together in a giant, poorly lit room which was drowned with constant doof-doof music. It was part games expo, part manga convention, part LAN, part extreme sports event, part home entertainment expo and part rave party, and succeeded at being none of them.

   Say good luck to your brother for me! The final year project is the hardest. I hope he has a good, dedicated team - he’s going to need it.

3. Robert Spencer says:

   April 4, 2007 at 12:34 pm

   Hi Tim,

   We *are* hiring people without lots of experience in some areas. Where we have all the appropriate leads, we’re staffing up the full team already. In some areas we don’t have all the leads we want and there’s no point lurching off in some random direction without the appropriate skills being in place, so we’re not building up those teams yet.

   So, no guarantees about your particular skillset but we definitely are hiring over a range of experience levels and will continue to do so. If you’re not successful in applying for a particular position, you might want to either apply for another or work on buffing up those specific skills that we have listed at http://www.interzonegames.com/jobs

   -Rj

4. azza-bazoo says:

   April 4, 2007 at 5:13 pm

   Hey wow, job offers on your own blog, nice work Tim!

   If it’s any solace, my degree is also of the kind with remarkably few job prospects in Perth (unless I were to bow before the ever-generous hand of the State Government) and so I’m also staving off the inevitable move eastwards (be that Sydney, or across the Pacific).

   On the other hand, university jobs are cushy! I’d advise holding on to such a job for as long as humanly possible, if not longer! (At least until it liquifies your brain, which took 2.5 years for me.)

5. Tom says:

   April 8, 2007 at 8:13 pm

   Well. Tim Colwill, BSc. (Games Technology) as you may well be, to me you will always be Tim “BSc. (Games Technology)” Colwill. Wait.

   Anyways, congratulations on graduating!

   You or Jess better blog these coming weeks. Or co-author somesort of.. superblog. I wanna know of your perthventures!

6. Monkeycitto says:

   April 11, 2007 at 6:49 am

   “smoke-heavy multimedia rooms”
   HA!

7. Jim(i) says:

   April 11, 2007 at 11:48 am

   I felt just like that when I graduated. Sure, on my transcript it says academic suspension but you can tell they don’t mean it. Why’s it always so hard to say “I love you”?

   Anyway, congratulations! Less on the graduating, lotsa people do that, more so on the eating of mega-burger. That I can respect.

8. Max Radical says:

   April 27, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   Go for it! The great big leap outward is a gigantic learning experience, and always more than awesome.

   A friend recently had to choose between promotion or the same job across the world, and everyone who’d travelled (including me) was near grabbing him by the throat and shouting “Move!”. And lo, he did, and saw that we were right.

   Besides, Perth isn’t going anywhere - it’ll be there when you visit.

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