Todd Batty, executive producer at EA Sports visited Southpointe Academy in Tsawwassen to speak with Grade 6 and 7 students about design and its various elements.
Batty, a father of two students at Southpointe, has been working in the gaming industry for more than 18 years. He holds two U.S. patents for game design, has two more patents pending, and has contributed to a multitude of video game titles that have been played by more than 300,000,000 individuals so far.
At Southpointe, Batty spoke about the importance of design and iteration – the ability to move back and forth with an idea to enhance the overall quality.
“Be brave and don’t be afraid to iterate and move within the design cycle,” Batty said. “The only difference between people who believe they’re creative and people that don’t believe they are creative is how confident people are in their ideas. I promise you there are no such things as bad ideas. I search for people with opposite ideas than my own because they provide a different perspective to an idea.”
Cristina Leo, technology integration specialist at Southpointe coordinated Batty’s talk session and was truly excited to have him interact with students and teachers.
“Rather than just playing video games, students now appreciate how the design cycle plays a role in some of their favourite games and how they can move beyond playing to creating,” Leo said.
In her design classes, Leo is constantly encouraging collaboration and creativity through a range of activities.
“Much of what we do in our design classes involves iteration, the ability to move back and forth and within the design cycle to improve our ideas,” she said.
For students, teachers and staff members that attended Batty’s inspiring session, the biggest takeaway was the power of ideas.
“We learned from Batty’s talk that design is a gamut of ideas,” added Leo. “Just as Mr. Batty said, nothing happens in isolation, great ideas come from the ability to collaborate and think creatively, this is something I foster in my design classes.”
