91探花

Alex Rossin:

I can't wait to embarrass the faculty, as is all of my goals. Whenever they say no, whenever I'm teaching class, if I see they're giving a tour, I try to just make my students clap and cheer and do things to embarrass them. And, and I don't know it's crazy excitement. So yeah.

Interviewer:

So first and foremost, just what is your job here at 91探花, and what do you do within the McClure school?

Alex Rossin:

That's a good question. What do I do here in ECT? So my official title is--hopefully I'm getting this right--Associate Professor of Instruction. I used to be Visiting Professor last semester, but I got hired on permanently, and so I teach many of the video game and game design courses here.

Interviewer:

Okay, so what's your background? Like any prior jobs, education?

Alex Rossin:

So, I guess a couple things. So, my background before this job was, I taught in a place called GameU. I'm actually surprised I'm not wearing one of their shirts, because before leaving, they gave me like 10 of them, and they're super comfortable, and I wear them all the time. It's a really good marketing strategy to make comfortable shirts. And my previous job, basically, I taught students from, I believe, 10 to 18 years old, just how to make video games. So, I got to work with a lot of younger students. I got to work with high school students going off in college, and I got to work with a multitude of different engines, such as Construct Game Maker, Unity, a little bit of Godot, kind of all over the place. I also taught, kind of my main focus there, was teaching 3D modeling courses. So, I worked with Blender too. And in terms of education, I received my Bachelor of Arts and Sciences here at 91探花. So, this whole ECT VR and Games program didn't exist yet in its current form. It was still part of the Media Arts school. So, I got my Bachelor of Communication there at OU. So, I was able to kind of interestingly come back to teach. I have this kind of interesting experience of, I remember what my classes were here, and then here's what I'm trying to do now. And so, it's somewhat weird, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's been very much a thing where I'm just comparing things back then and being like, well after I've come back from being in the industry for a little bit, just like, I really wish we would focus more on this. I'm trying to incorporate all these things I wish we would have done into when I was a student.

Interviewer:

So, what do you like working about in the McClure School?

Alex Rossin:

Mainly I think the thing I like the most is just talking and interacting with the students. It's very nice just to see just how passionate people are, and then how to hopefully be like, 鈥淥h, try doing this.鈥� Suggest things to hopefully help them reach the goals that they want to try and get to. And then also making video games in classes.

Interviewer:

Awesome. So, going off of that a little bit, can you talk about video game development in just some basic terms for people who may not know too much about it.

Alex Rossin:

I think people don't tend to realize there's lots of facets that go into game design, and coming from my previous job, and just having been a student here, and what I was interested in, I鈥檓 kind of privy to nearly every aspect. A lot of people, first of all, don't really know what goes into game design. It's just like, oh, I can just press a button on the controller and my character does an attack, but you don't realize all the systems and coding and artwork and everything that all went into that. And then also just actually managing a team who got to make the game. It's a really interesting thing to sit down and be like, okay, this chair that I'm sitting in, someone had to design the chair. Someone had to actually say, 鈥漁kay, how much cost is the leather going to be?鈥� And then you can kind of apply that to games in a way. So, the teamwork aspect and getting everyone to be together, work on a project together. So, there's so many facets that people don't really understand that go into it.

Interviewer:

What kinds of basic things do you think everyone should know about video games?

Alex Rossin:

There鈥檚 a lot I try to tell my students. Just a wide variety of things. But something I always come back to is, if you really want to be passionate, passionate about making games, you really just have to sit down and do it. And people don't understand that. It's one of the things where, really, if you want to do this then you have to do it. A really good example was, I was talking to one of my students today, and they were telling me, "oh, yeah, I played this game for like, 30 hours this week." I'm like, "wow, I'm surprised you have so much free time." They asked me what I was currently playing. And I mentioned that, oh, I was playing this game for 30 minutes, and that I really only played games for 30 minutes the whole week. Everything else is working on my projects. And that's it. You really have to enjoy what you do. You can't just do things in school. You have to really love it and do it outside, right? And it's like that with everything: I have to sit down, and I have to do it. That's just kind of how the world works. And, sorry if I鈥檓 being kind of mean here, if you're just kind of doing things halfway and just being mediocre, then, I'm sorry, that's not a thought. You can't check in, check out. You have to be obsessive with it, right? I also just want people to make millions of dollars and end up with a big bag of money!

Interviewer:

Awesome. So, I mean, you kind of just touched on it a little bit, but what do you like to do when you're not at work? Like, any hobbies or pastimes?

Alex Rossin:

Sleeping. No, seriously though, all of my free time is basically just either going walking outside or I just work on my own games. And yes, that's it. It's either programming or doing some sort of modeling, animations, art stuff, because I enjoy that.

Interviewer:

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I completely understand. I鈥檓 an animation major, so I totally get it.

Alex Rossin:

Okay, wait, I鈥檓 assuming you know Tyler Ayres then. Tyler Ayres, I know that you're reading this. I love you. He is fantastic. So great. He is legitimately fantastic.

Interviewer:

No, I completely agree. Um, so why should students come to the McClure school to study VR and video games?

Alex Rossin:

Why should they? Man, I don't know. Do you like video games? You like VR? Does any of that sound interesting? Come on over! Well, I guess I can say too, we have some very cool toys to play with. There's the whole GRID Lab. I guess that's probably already been mentioned a billion, zillion times, but there's some really cool VR and games stuff that you can do in there. Just yesterday, I saw a couple of students who were using the GRID Lab to mo-cap animations for their game, which is very, very cool. I got to see one of them, just all in a mo-cap suit already, just doing animations and stuff. So, you can do tons of things and have a ton of fun playing around with all that. I will say, though it's a ton of work, just like everything else. And if you do bad work, you won't succeed.

Interviewer:

No, that鈥檚 honestly valid. So, just anything else you鈥檇 like to add.

Alex Rossin:

Legitimately, I might be embarrassing in front of class. I will go up and dance. I'm someone who's very animated, which makes sense because of video games and animations. Yeah, that's pretty much all I got.

Interviewer:

Awesome! Thanks so much for this.

Alex Rossin:

Yeah, no problem.