Hi, I am Jack Reckin, a wannabe Game Developer. My life’s goal for as long as I can remember is to be a storyteller, to create a form of media for others to experience and enjoy.

 

I’ve been Homeschooled since the age of 5, allowing me to branch out and find things I am interested in from a younger age than most.

 

When I was younger, around the 7-10 age I wanted to be a movie director.  I was always a little interested in game development, looking out for games like Roblox, and my favourite game (other than good ol’ LEGO Stunt Rally and Age of Empires) was Video Game Tycoon Diamond Edition.  But I mostly wanted to make movies, more importantly, use movies to tell stories. 

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When I was around 11-12 I realised that directors didn’t write, they directed, immediately making me lose interest in my lifelong goal.  It’s not normal for a 12-year-old to know what they are doing with their life, but I was different, and after my whole life knowing what I was doing, it was weird, not having something to strive towards…

 

And then I wanted to make a Minecraft mod…

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I opened up Java and found my love for writing some text on a screen, the feeling of setting up eclipse, following MrCrayfishes YouTube tutorials and typing up my first block. That’s it, I was hooked. I remember making my “Rainbow Mod” with random rainbow coloured blocks I used to test how to make new blocks and items, I wanted to know more.

 

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My first step was playing around in RPG Maker VX Ace, it wasn’t bad, but too simple.  I looked into Scratch but it was never interesting, I had to actually type the code for it to be interesting.

 

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After a while I decided to look into a mentor type situation, having help from someone with experience in the field.  I was still 12 at this time, but after a while of working in Java and Cinema 4D (yes I also got into 3D animation, that’s another story) I wondered what else I could learn.

 

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I started by going to Auckland University and having a few meetings with an Associate Professor in the Computer Science department, Patrice Delmas, and sitting in on some of his lectures.   He wanted to enrol me and said to my Mum,  “By the time Jack is the regular age to come here he will already know most of it and be bored.”  The university admin said I was too young, I could still sit in on lectures if I wanted, but I would just have to redo it all later on down the line.

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So next after a recommendation from a fellow Homeschooling family, we found Najam Haq.  

Najam runs his own after school STEM business, Yeworkshop (Young Engineers Workshop), and at that time he was mentoring an adult in programming. He must have seen potential in me because even though I was younger than he planned for the small group he was making, he took me under his wing.

 

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Through Najam I learned a fair amount about programming. I did some courses through Rice University, and learned C#, Python, and GML, with Najams help. I also have completed a few games with his guidance and on my own participated in Game Jams. I also was employed by YEW for a while as a teacher aide but also had the opportunity to plan and run my own classes.

 

Last year after being hit with a big load of “I love this game, and I have been working on it for a little while, but this new idea is cool”, as well as coming up to my 17th birthday I decided to stop working with Najam and after years of focusing on programming moved onto NCEA through Te-Kura (NZ correspondence school).

 

Long story short, I have been in Te-Kura for over a year, and after doing Homeschooling for most of my life Te-Kura has felt very limiting and frustrating.  And so here I am, freshly 18 and looking to learn, to get out into the workforce and actually get my foot into the door to fulfil my dreams of being a full-time Game Developer.