WIMTACH Student Profile: Marko Kuper

After graduating with a degree in Biology, Marko Kuper decided that this career was not the right fit for him and chose to apply to the Game Development program at Centennial College. “I knew that there is limited availability for Junior Game Development positions, so when I heard about WIMTACH, I decided to apply right away,” he said. WIMTACH
and Centennial College enabled Marko to acquire the essential knowledge and experience to transition towards a new path.

Marko was thrilled to join a team of Student Researchers working on a Role Playing Game (RPG) in partnership with WIMTACH’s industry partner, Flamingo Rampant. The RPG aimed to help children explore their self-identity through an engaging narrative. As a student Full Stack Developer, Marko had the opportunity to assist both the Front-end and Back-end development teams throughout the project.

During the development process, Marko worked on programming the non-playable characters’ behaviour and actions in the game’s Artificial Intelligence. He also programmed the in-game levels that the user can achieve, which is essential to the gaming experience. While working with the Front-end team, Marko designed and developed the combat interface and tutorials for the game’s User Interface, which were crucial for players to understand the game’s mechanics and controls.

In his Game Development program, Marko has learned and gained experience with Unity, one of the industry’s most popular game engines. Still, since Marko’s team and project manager at WIMTACH decided to use Gadot, a game engine that he was unfamiliar with, he had the perfect opportunity to learn something new while working on the project. “I knew I would have to learn it [Gadot] from scratch but becoming familiar with new game engines is a wonderful opportunity I didn’t want to miss out on,” he said. While developing the game, he also had the opportunity to work with C#, the most popular programming language in the game development industry.

Now a recent Centennial College Game Development program graduate, Marko is currently exploring available positions within the industry. He is specifically seeking Junior Unity Game Developer roles and is hoping to join a smaller studio to help kickstart his career. Over the next five years, he intends to contribute to developing and releasing multiple games while building his reputation in the game development industry through collaborative work on various projects. “My goal is to further develop my skills and secure opportunities to work with industry-leading companies like Sony Santa Monica or Ubisoft,” he said. He encourages students not to overlook the opportunities provided by WIMTACH and the chance for career development. “WIMTACH is a great opportunity for any aspiring specialist to gain crucial work experience before graduation,” he said.

WIMTACH proudly recognizes funding to support this work from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) with Applied Research and Technology Partnership grants (ARTPs)

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