Full Sail Stories

Paul Nowak是一个终身的电子游戏迷和游戏设计教员，他正在为下一代游戏设计师的个人和职业成功做准备. He started out in the advertising world, 但几年后，他决定改变职业，并通过注册Full Sail的游戏设计硕士课程来追求自己的激情. Paul excelled in the program, made his mark on the school with original research, 并继续为迪士尼互动世界从事社交媒体游戏和项目的专业工作. In his current role as the instructor for Game Mechanics I in the Game Design program, Paul凭借广泛的工作经验和对玩家心理学的见解，为课堂带来了全新的视角.

Paul made waves at Full Sail before he became a teacher. During his time enrolled in the Game Design master's program, 他成为了第一个在学校进行原创研究的研究生. Paul worked with his course director, Dr. Shawn Stafford, to carry out an international psychographic survey of 7,000 gamers.

“我们正在研究性别认同和电子游戏偏好之间的关系," he says. 保罗和肖恩的合作创造了一个过程，供未来的学生在进行自己的原创研究时遵循. He also turned his thesis into a book called Gaymers: The Difference a 'Y' Makes and gave lectures at conferences like GaymerX.

Paul创造游戏的专业经验涵盖了从广告游戏到虚拟世界再到免费游戏的各个领域. He helped design Facebook games in the early 2010s, as well as Team USA's Pinsanity, a multi-platform social-mobile game. “所有游戏内购买都用于购买我们的(2014年)奥运会运动员前往俄罗斯参加比赛的机票. It was awesome," he says.

One of his favorite jobs was working on Disney Interactive World's Pixie Hollow. 这款大型多人在线角色扮演游戏让6-10岁的女孩有机会与小叮当和她的仙女朋友们一起玩.

“我们都坚信小女孩也应该享受高质量的电子游戏, and we made some beautiful, beautiful things and had the most loyal players I've ever seen," says Paul.

Pixie Hollow also gave Paul a good look at playtesting, 游戏开发周期中的一个阶段，游戏设计师和市场营销人员在此招募目标玩家，观察他们在玩新游戏时的反应.

“我在课堂上提到的一个重要例子是我为《OG官网》设计了一个大型功能. We did a very formal external playtest with little girls, a marketing company, 这里的故事有助于说明我在演讲中提到的关于游戏测试的观点，以及设计师用来征求游戏测试者自己都没有意识到的游戏意见的方法," he says.

As an instructor, Paul超越了编码和脚本，并帮助学生弄清楚如何将他们的个人优势带到游戏设计中. "Programming has never really been my strong suit, 我认为让学生们知道有很多不同类型的设计师有着不同的优势是很重要的," he says. “我对玩家心理的理解一直是我带给游戏设计团队的特别之处, balance, content creation, and execution."

Paul takes a holistic approach to teaching, 鼓励他的学生在学习特定的编程语言和脚本工具时看到全局. “就像文艺复兴时期的艺术家可以绘画、雕刻、做壁画和马赛克瓷砖一样, because they understood the fundamental concepts behind art, 他们表达这些愿景的方式比他们使用的媒介更重要," Paul says.

他还强调了设计习惯，以帮助学生从优秀的游戏设计师一跃成为优秀的游戏设计师. For example, 保罗要求他的每个学生在他们提交的任何文件的里面写上自己的名字. 这是一个小小的要求，但他从经验中知道，它可以防止大的后果.

"When you have a lot of designers, 很多人同时编辑同一个Word文档, 你确实需要跟踪谁修改了什么……一些不道德的同事试图把他们的错误当作是我做的事情. 如果我没有在变更日志上签名，以便能够补偿自己，我可能已经被解雇了，”保罗说.

保罗在教学中有很多个人和专业经验可以借鉴, and he recognizes the importance of both. 他在课堂内外培养与学生的关系，为他们毕业后的生活做好准备. “通过个人经历，我学会了面对(职场)问题的正确和错误方式, and in sharing those lessons from my past with my students, they are better prepared for their futures," he says.

Paul还鼓励学生们在重磅游戏之外开拓自己的道路. "Don't be afraid to open your own independent studio, design a game and hire your own team to make it an iPhone app, launch a board game on Kickstarter, or open an escape room... 作为游戏产业的一部分，这些机会现在变得更加普遍，设计师和玩家之间的障碍比以往任何时候都要少."