As you probably know by now, I am Jaime Fraina.  I just graduated from Champlain College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronic Game and Interactive Development, specializing in Game Design (Woo, thats a long name).

Before college, I’ve created almost 40 minigames for friends.  These games ranged from table top games similar to Dungeons and Dragons to short electronic games about lady bugs trying to escape from hell.  Point being, even before college, I was interested in exploring many aspects of game design and very much enjoyed creating something that other people found enjoyment in.

Then I attended Champlain College of Vermont majoring in Electronic Game and Interactive Design and loved it. The course was designed to help develop team skills, game design skills, and technical skills. It was an accelerated four year Bachelor’s of Science program, enhanced with liberal arts studies. Over the course of the four years I attended classes at Champlain I have gained a lot more experience and was taught how to use industry tools including Maya, Torque Game Engine Advanced, Photoshop, C++, Java, Flash, and many others. I have created many design documents and was the lead designer for three full games. The past two years I have attended MIGS (Montreal International Game Summit); the experience was amazing and my view on games was changed. I now see that games can be more than just something for people to enjoy. I look back and see those games I created in high school and see that they lack depth and meaning. Whenever I create a new game, I take this into account and try to create games that could be considered art or have some deeper meaning to them.

I spent the Spring 2009 semester in Montreal and loved it.  It is a city that has quite a few big game companies that I was able to visit.  I was taught by designers that are currently working in the industry, which was very beneficial for me.   I went back to Montreal after graduating to work at Babel Media as a Functionality Quality Assurance Tester and then switched to Bug-Tracker for some Compliance Quality Assurance Testing.

Currently I am working remotely for a small studio in New York as a Junior Game Designer and Programmer.  I love the experience and that I’m able to work on games that are going to be played by many people, and enjoy that the dynamics of how the work is done is almost the same as the small projects I’ve worked on during school.  I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me.

You can contact me at: jaime.fraina@gmail.com