Micah: How did you first got involved with Roblox?
Will: Roblox had posted about a competition for aspiring game developers to submit their game pitch ideas. So, I formed a development team- Marcus Túlio, Emre Soylu, Logan Hunt, and Abishanan Sriranjan- and we began working on a magic arena style fighting game.
It took some time but we were later contacted by Roblox to do a formal zoom presentation for our game pitch.
Micah: What was the presentation like?
Will: I was super nervous for it but it was great- Professor Adams helped me prepare for it since I'd never done something like this before. We presented our project to a group of Roblox game developers and other employees and ended up having a great time. Everything went well- they were smiling and asking us questions and giving us feedback. We also got to ask questions about the Accelorator Program, which you got into by winning the competition.
Micah: When did you find out you won?
Will: One of my good friends and I went to Beanz to get smoothies and as we were in line I got an email from Roblox that said, "Congratulations! we picked your game". That's when we found out about our acceptance into Roblox's Accelorator Program.
Micah: Can you tell me more about your experience in the Accelorator Program?
Will: It was amazing! My team and I got assinged a group of professional game developers with 10+ years of industry experience that mentored us. They gave us advice for things like game dev 101, user experience, and technical stuff. We were able to go to them with our game prototypes and they'd playtest them, help us problem solve and imporve.
I am so grateful for this experience, it gave me the oppurtunity to get my work in front of major industry professionals, meet new people, get new opportunities, and grow. At first, I was nervous to enter the professional gaming community but Roblox was a really cool company to work with and they seem to value their employees.
Micah: What are current projects that you're working on?
Will: I'm currently working on a game with some of my previous team members [Marcus and Emre] called Monster Race. In the game, you get to race monsters! It's a multiplayer format and you get to customize your monster.
Micah: What advice would you have for other students?
Will: I didn't think I was ready for something like this but I still went for it. Regardless of your fears, go for it because you never know what incredible oppurtunites could come from it.
