GAME PROGRAMMER

Hey there! I'm Gustavo.

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I am a 19-year-old computer scientist and aspiring game designer with an unquenchable passion for coding (and playing) video games, as well as everything involving virtual reality. I was born in Ontario, Canada to my Mexican parents. I currently live in Los Angeles, California. I have been programming from a very young age thanks to my father.

When I was four years of age, he introduced me to a game from 2008 called LittleBigPlanet. It was the catalyst for my game design and programming career as it gave me the tools to make more games inside of it with ease. LBP sparked my love for coding through its satisfying and simple visual programming, inspiring me to keep reverse-engineering everything that I see.

 

Later in elementary school, I discovered virtual reality technology through YouTube, where people put on a special helmet to ‘enter the game’. In high school, I finally got to experience virtual reality on a trip to LA. My family and I visited a mall that had a VR arcade. During just 15 minutes of being inside the digital world for the very first time, I saw the true potential that this technology would have on life itself. My fascination for virtual reality led me to hone my coding skills on game design for VR.

 

I learned to hack games for the purpose of teaching myself about game security, and I continue to ]practice my coding skills through not only hacking but also through completing Lua commissions. I have developed some small projects on my own to practice making games, and I am currently working on the prototype for my dream virtual reality game involving building your own handheld gadgets to solve puzzles, beat enemies and overcome your environment.

 

I still like to hack games, and I am constantly learning new things about game security and development. In a way, I’m enhancing my coding skills by playing games. Throughout my game design classes at NYFA, I have gained more knowledge than I ever would have expected. The assignments related to game design are super enjoyable and genuinely teach me a lot of things about making a powerful and immersive game. Some of the work I’m doing includes making a full board game and working with my classmates to make a functioning digital game.

 

One company I’ve recently been looking up to is Stress Level Zero, the creators of Bonelab, my favorite VR game. The massively unique physics engine of Bonelab allowed me to touch and visually feel my environment by giving me a full body that I could easily imagine myself in. No other game I know can achieve this level of immersion, and so I seek to replicate that same type of immersion for my dream VR game. 

After I graduate from my NYFA program in 2027, I look forward to pursuing the VR Game Design program at the NYFA New York campus and eventually joining a game company as a game programmer, or finding and gathering a small group of other artists and game developers to help me develop my dream design.

 

I wish to expand my gaming setup with a haptic suit that will let me physically feel the virtual environment through special electrodes on the skin and full body trackers that bring my entire body into the game. There are countless other virtual reality accessories out there still in the works, and I cannot wait to try every single one of them.

 

My ultimate goal in life is to become as immersed into the digital world as possible, whether it be by making a revolutionary game or contributing to the technology itself, potentially by going into electrical engineering. Virtual reality has and will continue to positively impact the world of media in every way, and I believe that after enough time, it will become fully integrated into society as we know it.

 

I am here to help virtual reality reach its full potential, one small project at a time. 

I am a machine on a mission.