University of Montana Game Designer Enjoying a Winning Strategy

Ask any student what they like to do in their spare time, and a popular answer is playing video games.

FROM SPARE TIME TO PASSION

UM News Service tells us that if life is a game, a University of Montana student has discovered some winning moves. 

Brittany Westlund, a third-year graduate student from Kalispell, studies UM’s new Master of Fine Arts in Game Design and Interactive Media. She has completed her degree in media arts and intends to finish her graduate work next spring.

ACCOLADES MOUNTING

Game design is life for Westlund, and she has scored some impressive wins in recent months. Last spring, her game won Best in Show in its category at UM’s Media Arts Expo. This past summer, she collaborated on a short-form video game – or game poem – published in Game Poems magazine. Additionally, an article she wrote was accepted recently for publication in the Games for Higher Education encyclopedia. 

Brittany is accomplishing all this all while teaching online UM classes, launching her own game studio, Charmlab Studio, and working on a video game about a curious mushroom who helps restore a struggling forest through rest, renewal and small acts of care.

REWARDS OF TEACHING

As an instructor, Brittany was quoted in the release as saying, “I really enjoy it so much, I love helping students understand things they didn’t think they could – like coding – which they totally can. It’s just so fun to prove to them what they’re capable of.”

And she is considering a teaching career.

GAME POEMS

She worked on the game poem, Asunder, with UM Assistant Professor Ashley Rezvani and UM alumna Kate Lloyd. Game poems are short interactive experiences designed to elicit a feeling. 

In their game, a person is in a house surrounded by swirling objects and intrusive thoughts. Players are encouraged to make the first moves to calm the chaos by sorting what can be held and what can be set gently aside. When the character becomes unburdened at last, the player is rewarded with a quiet moment where she steps outside into a sense of relief.

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There is so much more fascinating information on Brittany Westlund's game design and the Game Design and Interactive Media programs offered at the University of Montana, featuring both in-person and online studies. Enjoy the full article here.