She realized that her high school pipe dream, video games, was the combination of storytelling and computer programming she had been looking for. She wanted to find a career that would satisfy her interest in writing and programming. She eventually found that her other interest, creative writing, was missing from her life. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management as a computer science major. She took two more years of Java classes and went on to enroll in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Jeffery S. “It was a super basic project but still a lot of fun.” “In the class description it said, ‘at the end of the year, you will make a game,’ which was ‘Pong,’” she said. The first step was to learn how to code, so she enrolled in a programming class and began learning Java. But being a “naive little brat,” she had little idea of the work necessary to accomplish such a goal. It wasn’t until she was a freshman in high school that gaming grew into an obsession, with the help of Nintendo consoles like the GameCube and Wii.īy that point, Vokal knew she wanted to design games for a living.

Her favorites were simulators – more specifically, pet simulators. The games she did play, she played all the time. Megan Vokal didn’t play lots of video games as a kid. ‘Deus Ex’ was the first time that I thought, ‘I can impact the game world in an interesting way.’” You might step on a rat, and you feel kinda bad because you hear that sickening crack. “If I wanted to be a total villain and do horrible things to people, the game allowed it. “Everything I thought about the way action games were supposed to work, everything I thought about the way choice was supposed to work, was on its head,” he said. The closest thing to a life-changing experience Glass ever had with gaming was when he played “Deus Ex” as a sophomore in high school. It wasn’t just a way to occupy his time a good game was an emotional experience, one that taught him something. His best friends growing up were the people with whom he could share his video-gaming experiences. I consumed as much of that stuff as I could.” “My introverted time was always spent with games.

“From that point, as a kid, that was my life,” Glass said.

He played it so much the battery acid began leaking out of the case. His mother bought him his first game, a Coleco “Donkey Kong” Mini-Arcade, at a yard sale. Growing up on a farm in Valley, Neb., the youngest of 10 half-brothers and sisters, his early life consisted of chores and video games. Leo Glass should have known he would end up making video games one day, or so he says. Local game developer Clockwork Demon creates games that explore human nature

Pokemon clockwork art