Former Emergent Media Center employee, Grant Parker ’13 stopped by the Emergent Media Center and took some time to chat with us about his time at the EMC.

How did your experience here translate into the professional world after graduation?

One of the nice things that Champlain does is working in teams. You’re working in the lab at school, and you’re working at home on school assignments at very odd times, so getting to work at a place that you can actually call work and get to be in a studio environment, that’s a different kind of experience that you need to have and learn, and it’s nice to get that experience. I went to an internship at LucasArts and by the time I got there I already knew how to work in a studio environment, so that helped me while I was there. There were things that I got to learn at the EMC that I didn’t have to learn to try to impress people at an internship and having that experience led me to the job I have now.

Where do you see things going in your industry over the next few years, and how do think a place like this can keep up with that or even contribute?

When you’re in a company and you know there are very adverse risks, the company isn’t going to be jumping around on that bleeding edge just trying to find new systems that are coming out, they’re going to be asking: how can we incorporate them, and I think that’s one thing where the EMC had allowed itself to be agiler in terms of trying new things. Its mission statement is different from a regular company so it can be more lenient with  jumping out into that unknown more. I think that’s a valuable thing because it gives a lot of interesting experiences on a student’s resume that a lot of people are not going to have. These new things will be eye-catching and interesting for people.

Grant is currently working at Crystal Dynamics as a Game Designer. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Video Game Design from Champlain College.