A STUDENT who studied games design in Warrington has been awarded a scholarship as she pursues her dream of breaking into the multi-billion pound industry.
Thalia Thompson studied Computer Games Design at Priestley College before going on to Edge Hill University where she has received the “High Achievers Scholarship”.
The award will help fund her studies over the next three years after which she dreams of one day working for Nintendo or Studio Ghibli in Japan.
“It means they have recognised how well I did with my final college results so thankfully my hard work paid off,” said Thalia, who collected a triple distinction* in her BTEC.
“I chose CGD as I love anything to do with computing, especially games design. I know it isn’t a typical course for girls to pick but that makes me more determined to succeed. I picked Priestley because they seemed to offer more than other colleges.”
Priestley was one of the first colleges in the country to run a computer games design course. Its students progress onto bespoke university places and internships with companies such as TT Games, which is a part of Warner Brothers.
During her time at Priestley Thalia got to grips with industry software such as digital sculpting tool ZBrush and created a game that was published on Itch.io, a site that allows anyone to download the end product.
Thalia finished her course in summer and is now at Edge Hill studying Computing Games Programming, which also covers web development, forensics and robotics.
She said the highlight so far had been meeting like-minded people.
“I have watched a lot about games design on YouTube and always liked the idea of designing my own.
“Most of the games in general are fighting or shooting related and I want to create a different genre of games suitable for all types of people.”
