{"id":2621,"date":"2025-10-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/?p=2621"},"modified":"2025-11-04T13:46:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T13:46:30","slug":"beyond-nyu-from-playing-the-game-to-building-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/30\/beyond-nyu-from-playing-the-game-to-building-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond NYU: From playing the game to building the game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two decades before Zeke Virant helped build award-winning video games, he was a 10-year-old who was first exposed to the gaming world through his Apple II computer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when he joined online messaging boards to team up with friends to practice their gaming skills. The player community was small then, as digital devices were not yet widespread, and people had limited access to online gaming. Virant graduated from Bard College and moved to New York City to work as an opera composer. Soon after attending a lecture at the NYU Game Center, he applied to its Masters of Fine Arts program and became one of the first students to graduate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant talked to WSN about his transition from music to game design, and his involvement in building \u201cIndiana Jones and the Great Circle,\u201d which won the <\/span>D.I.C.E. Award for Adventure Game of the Year.<\/span><\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

WSN:<\/b> What was it like being one of the first students in NYU\u2019s game design program?<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant:<\/b> From the very beginning, having a nice, tight community where there were people from all kinds of different game design backgrounds \u2014 or even hobbyists \u2014 was super duper inspiring, and it was super easy to do good work in that environment. As the first class of MFA students, you\u2019re just forming this program and building a cohesive, tight bond between everyone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up in a farm area in Dublin, Georgia, Virant spent his summers exploring the internet. His curiosity led him to experiment with making music and designing websites, which led to his acceptance to a boarding school despite low grades. He also dabbled in video games, including the 1997 shooter game \u201cHalf-Life.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant also recruited his undergraduate classmates to join his punk band. The experience inspired him to pursue music professionally, leading him to enroll in a music program during his time at Bard College.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

WSN:<\/b> How did you transition from making music to game design?<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant<\/b>: When I started doing music in high school, I really wanted to do something unique and experimental. So I played with lots and lots of different people and tried lots and lots of different styles of music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After I wrote an opera, it struck me that I didn\u2019t know what I was doing. I liked doing it, but I really wanted to make games, and that\u2019s been my dream job since I was a kid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through NYU\u2019s connection with the city\u2019s game design community, Virant was able to secure a spot in the Game Center\u2019s pilot incubator program and launch his first game in 2014. The program \u2014 which typically starts in the fall and offers up to $15,000 stipend for developers \u2014 was Virant\u2019s launch pad for turning his thesis, \u201cSoft Body,\u201d into a publishable game for people to purchase on PlayStation 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant landed his first game designer job at Avalanche Studios in 2017 after moving to Sweden for his wife\u2019s postdoctoral work. In 2020, he became a senior game designer at MachineGames, helping to build \u201cIndiana Jones and the Great Circle.\u201d Similar to most projects that were impacted by the pandemic, the game\u2019s launch was postponed to 2024.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIndiana Jones and the Great Circle\u201d is a first-person game where players explore locations as Indiana Jones to discover hidden secrets of several historical sites \u2014 such as <\/span>Vatican City and the Great Pyramids at Giza \u2014 before World War II.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

WSN:<\/b> What was it like creating \u2018Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant:<\/b> It\u2019s very much like when I played \u2018Mega Man 2\u2019 and \u2018The Oregon Trail\u2019 with my brother and our friend. It would be all of us sitting around it together enjoying it. I missed that whole experience of playing really difficult puzzle games with your family. Indiana Jones really brought that out in a lot of people because people love the character and the story. It was something that people could experience together just by watching someone else play and not necessarily having to play themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant said that being a part of a tight-knit and passionate community at NYU helped him accelerate his path in the game design industry. He cited professors such as Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz, both award-winning designers and founding faculty of the Game Center, as helping him solidify his interest in the field. Having worked as both an independent designer and in Triple-A development \u2014 projects produced by big-budget studios \u2014 he still believes in creating games based on authentic feedback to deliver the best possible experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

WSN:<\/b> What\u2019s the difference between working independently versus in Triple-A development?<\/span><\/p>\n

Virant:<\/b> When I worked by myself, I relied on play testing to make sure that I would push it to a higher level. Whereas when I worked in Triple-A development, I worked with people who are basically there to mentor me and say, \u2018This is not hitting the mark, we need to make this better.\u2019 In Triple-A games, you\u2019re surrounded by people who are incredible at their craft. It\u2019s really nice to have that surrounding you all the time to know that you can always ask someone, \u2018What would you do?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Contact Kaitlyn Sze Tu at kszetu@nyunews.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

This story Beyond NYU: From playing the game to building the game<\/a> appeared first on Washington Square News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two decades before Zeke Virant helped build award-winning video games, he was a 10-year-old who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2624,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions\/2624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}