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January 31, 2019P-TECH Students Learn from the Experts
What do video games such as Mortal Kombat X, Injustice, Mad Max and Shadow of War have in common? Parts of the technology for them were created in Troy.
On Wednesday, representatives of WB Games New York, which worked on those popular games and dozens of others, gave students in the Capital Region BOCES Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) program East Campus an inside view on how to end up in a career designing and making video games.
Elliott Haase, an executive producer for WB Games and Brett McNeff, an assistant producer, detailed how they ended up in their positions as well as what WB Games – which is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers – does for the gaming world.
“When you go into the online menu of Injustice 2 and check your stats, that’s you connecting with our servers and accessing our data,” said Haase, who described how WB creates the tools that allow gamers to challenge others of similar skill levels and to track their own online stats.
Haase and McNeff also spoke about the different coding languages that they and their coworkers use, which includes Python and HTML/CSS. These are all languages that P-TECH students are currently working with as they learn how to design websites and video games. The Capital Region Chamber of Commerce arranged for their visit to P-TECH.
“It’s really cool that we are getting background on how video games are made and operate and how local it is,” said Sha-Quan Jenkins, a P-TECH freshman from Watervliet.
Classmate Teaghan Rockenstire concurred.
“It’s interesting that we get to learn things like this that we care about and may apply to our future,” said the Watervliet teen.
