Once upon a time, Neil Boyd had a "respectable job". Having graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Technology, he found himself standing in front of a classroom explaining the finer points of computing to secondary students.

Then something very strange happened.

A casual interest in games led him to the annual Australian Game Developers Conference in Melbourne, and there he discovered, to his amazement, that not only was there a thriving games development industry hungry for talent, but there are also places you can go to get industry knowledge and experience.

-My mum still doesn't think I am doing the right thing," Boyd concedes. -My wife loves it, and all my mates think it is just the coolest job in the world."

Currently completing his second year of computer game development at the Canberra-based Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), which trains wannabe developers in computer animation and games design, Boyd is already embarking on his first group-designed game.

-The biggest challenge at this stage is getting all the characters to look the same," Boyd says. -Everybody has such different influences, and we are trying to maintain some consistency."

Founded in 1996, the school became a registered IT training facility in 1999, and currently boasts 169 full time students, with up to 150 enrolled in periodic short courses that are designed to provide an introduction to a certain aspect of games design.

-In effect we deliver people to 3D animation industries, advertising, film, TV, and games development," explains Ian Gibson, head of school at the AIE. -We like to limit the size. We have four classrooms running, so the quality of the teaching is high, and there is a nice atmosphere among the students."

While delivering competent developers into the games industry is the more serious objective of the school, Gibson clearly enjoys working with such highly motivated students.

-We have to literally kick them out at night - tell them to go home or they would stay here 24 hours," Gibson says.

Camilla Carmody is one of the self-confessed games junkies who managed to score a place at the AIE straight after leaving high school.

-I did Web page design in high school, and spent a lot of times building animated gifs, so I knew what I wanted to do," Carmody says. -I was looking into courses that would teach CAD, when I came across this course."

Despite being one out of only two or three girls in the entire course, as well as one of the younger students, Carmody says she settled in quickly because -everyone is just totally obsessed with games".

-There is a lot of competition, and some people have already had a lot of experience when they come into the school, so it can be a bit nerve racking," Carmody says. -But it not like I-have-to-do-better-than-you competition, everybody helps each other quite a lot."

While it seems almost everyone at the AIE is games-mad, there are some exceptions, especially in the more artistic stream. However, what they lack in game addiction, they more than make up for in commitment to art.

Self-taught before coming to the AIE, Shalini Thanapalan had managed to line up some freelance 3D work, although she quickly realised she would need to get some professional training to get very far as a 3D artist, and came across the AIE on the Web.

-Last time I played a game it was Donkey Kong," she admits. -I am into this purely from the artistic side - animation is my first passion."

Scoping the Syllabus

After completing a Degree in Software Engineering at the University of Newcastle, including jointly developing a game in his final year, Paul Baker began to look for work in the games development arena.

-When we actually proposed to do a game for our final year project the academics were not really keen on the idea," Baker says. -I don't think they realised that the game industry is so big. Just as I was leaving they began to implement courses which were more relevant to games design, but it still isn't very widespread."

Despite having worked on a game for his final year project, Baker found himself repeatedly knocked back in the job market due to a lack of industry experience, and wound-up fast-tracked into second year at the AIE thanks to his previous studies.

-I started looking around for work, but companies were really looking for people with more industry experience," Baker says, adding that the AIE integrated real world experience into the course, through regular talks from people who already work for games developers, or who run their own workshops.

AIE student Adam Rattur says the very structure of the course is as much about working with people as it is about the technology itself.

-There is more politics involved in designing a game than I thought there would be," says Rattur. -We are learning on industry standard tools, but the people interaction is probably just as important."

Having cut his teeth on Wonder Boy in Monster Land on a Sega Master System when he was about five, Rattur is one of a generation of late-teen-early-twenties who spent more time defeating the age check on Leisure Suit Larry than trying to get fake ID for the local bar, and he is keen to be a part of the next wave of games development.

-With the success of things like the Sims, you can see that there is room for more than just action and killing-orientated games," Rattur says.

Baker agrees, and says he is learning a lot about the psychology, strategy, and politics that go into games development.

-We focus on the game play in the early stages far more than the graphics," Baker says. -We may have to ditch an idea which includes a God-like being, because most of the publishing companies are US-based, and they tend not to like religious things."

While Baker can see the changing demographic of games players forcing a shift in the level of sophistication and the thematic focus of most games, he believes the core market will always be the under 15s.

-Even though a generation have now grown up playing games, and many of them are continuing to play games, they biggest demographic will always be kids," Baker says. -Part of the course is to think of things like that - it's about more than just what is cool for us."

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