Simply put, our computational art class would have been perfect for blog author Lisa Brown. Not only did she double major in visual art and computer science but also attended Centre College. Additionally, it's interesting that we had another Centre alumna, Pang Hartman, talk to us about her online gaming company FrogDice (Dr. Stonedahl writes about it here).
More to the point, I enjoyed reading about how well a liberal arts education served Lisa in her path to become a game developer. Although I've realized the importance of the varied education offered at Centre, it's still interesting to see the specific ways it influences individuals. For instance, Lisa learned about iteration, which is the act finishing a piece layer by layer, from her painting class. This helped in game development as she was already familiar with the process.
In another example, Lisa used her skills solving problems in computer science courses to aid in game development as well. As anyone with programming experience can attest, there are often bugs to fix that have effects ranging from not rendering a pixel properly to preventing the code from running at all. Because similar bugs occur when implementing a video game, Lisa was able to transfer much of her experience to her work with gaming.
Overall, I learned a few cool bits from Lisa about how she is fusing knowledge from many different areas to become successful at designing video games. However, I also gained a deeper appreciation of what is done here at Centre and undoubtedly many other liberal arts colleges. Lisa seems to confirm that knowledge in a variety of fields is useful in whatever career path one chooses.
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