Onteca and Creative Crossroads

It has been a while since I have gone to Onteca in Liverpool. Two years ago I went to two 2 day workshops - one on Game Design and the other on mobile gaming. It takes over 2 hours to get there from Manchester (walk, bus, train, walk) and I remember being knackered. I also remember failing to make an interview and thinking it too far to go more than twice a week. So why go back there now? Well I have been applying for jobs for a while and am having trouble getting even one interview without a suitable demo or recent training/experience. So I have decided to get a few months further training for the games industry.

Onteca lies on Windsor Road in Toxteth and is run by Jon. It is part of Toxteth TV. The facilities consist of a room with a dozen PCs loaded with various software, different game consoles (XBox, PS2 and GameCube) and teaching staff. They are also linked to the games industry (Codemasters, Infogrammes and possibly others). Creative Crossroads is a 16 week course or finishing school for training for next generation games. There are about 12 people on the course all from different backgrounds and I am the only one with a programming background (the rest are artists).

The course kicked off with presentations of favourite games. I chose Magic the Gathering (although I brought Rubiks, Myst and juggling balls too). I explained the card game well but rushed through the computer game - there was an issue between turn based and real time. Others showed different games across several genres. Later on Jon went through what the course covers - games technology and Maya and handed out Maya tutorial books to each of us. He had to go early and I found two other people had travelled up from Manchester. Overall I enjoyed this and it looks promising for project work and a career. I only wish I was not so tired nor unable to sleep at the correct times.