Student Testimonial: iD Tech

Collin Mackett, Gameplay Engineer and former iD Tech camper

How did you turn your love of gaming into a career in the software industry?

I got my start in coding as a camper at iD Tech during my freshman and sophomore years in high school. I attended summer camps at Carnegie Mellon University, first taking a course in Level Design before returning the following summer for a course in Unreal Engine 3. They were both such awesome experiences that I ended up coming back as an iD Tech instructor at summer camp in 2013.

What role did iD Tech play in your career journey?

To me, iD Tech is more than a camp—it’s a major part of my pathway from starting as a high school student that was passionate about games, to going into college for computer science, and eventually becoming a developer in the gaming industry. My time at iD Tech inspired me to pick computer science as my major in college, which I did for all four years. After that, I ended up going to grad school for video game programming as well.

In my professional career, I started as an intern at Madden and eventually grew into a full-time role. During my four years there, I worked on the Gameplay team and helped with the creation of Madden 16-19. In my next role, I worked for a studio called GameSim, where I was able to work on several awesome projects. Currently, I work at Ubisoft Red Storm as a Senior Gameplay Engineer. I have been with this company for two years now, working on Assassin's Creed VR.

What is your favorite part about your career?

I really like being a gameplay engineer. There's just something awesome about taking a design from a prototype to trying it out to making it into a full feature that is really inspiring to me. It's the biggest part of making a game. It's the back of the box features—it's what people get to play and get their hands on. And to say that I've worked on that is really rewarding.

What do you think is in store for the future of the STEM and tech industry?

I think as we keep going forward, kids are going to be taking coding classes the way that you would take Spanish or any other foreign language. You're going to be learning this new language, which it really is—it's learning to speak with your computer. I think one of the most exciting things about the gaming industry is how fast it changes and how fast it grows. Just in my lifetime alone, I can remember playing on Nintendo, then Super Nintendo, and what the graphics look like then to what they are now that we're getting into 4K, which is exploring massive universes. The tech industry is only going to continue its growth.