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 was offered two summer jobs (at EA Mobile and BugTracker), but due to time constraints, I was unable to work at these studios.

Currently I am working at Babel Media in Montreal as a Functionality Quality Assurance Tester.  I love the experience and the games I’m able to work on. the projects are much bigger than the ones I worked on as Project Manager at the Emergent Media Center in Burlington, Vermont, but the dynamics of how the work is done is almost the same.  I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me.

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