Meerkat Puppies

Hello all!

It is august and autumn is upon us sooner than we expected, again.
Autumn means the beginning of schools as well. Here at Lapland Studio, we’ve had two two interns working through the hottest months of the summer, but soon we have to release them from our office an let them continue their studies again.

Meet Samu Poikajärvi, our programming intern, and Tommi Puolamaa, our testing intern.

O: Hi guys! Sorry to bother you again, but the readers of our blog are desperate to hear who you guys are and how did you get an internship to a game company.

T: Hello there Olli! I’ve been busy testing lately, so this conversation is a much needed break J. Something about me, well, where should I start. I study Information Technology on Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences and I’m currently on my internship period as a tester here, at Lapland Studio.
Oh, our readers want information on how to get an internship to a game company? Well, it’s fairly simple, send your application and after that, call, call and call to that company until you finally get an answer J.

S: Greetings to all the readers out there! Just like Tommi I am studying IT at the Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences, starting my third year this fall. I guess I’m just a newbie programmer who likes to work with games. J
As to the matter how I got an internship here? Well I sent my application few times and also made some phone calls. I got interviewed and eventually managed to make it here.

O: How have you found the experience working on a game? Has it been what you expected? All fun and games?

T: Experience has been interesting, our team has been very friendly and nice and it has been great working here. The experience has been about what I imagined it to be, although I did not realize there would be so much tweaking and minor adjusting regarded to menus, all the commands, where to use them and where to ignore them etc. Otherwise it has been quite what I expected.

S: Overall it has been very pleasant and teaching experience. I’d say it has been somewhat expected, but has had some surprises there too. There’s lots of tweaking for sure. It is interesting to see how a project like this develops with all the surfacing issues. The team behind the game has been fantastic, and hardly ever are there dull moments in our working environment.

O: Tommi, testing is not always seen as the most luxurious area of game development. It seems to me though, that you’ve had good time with Meerkats. You’ve tracked quite a bunch of bugs too.

T: Yeah, actually I’ve had good time testing this game. Sometimes there were those days when nothing worked and game kept on crashing (yes, you guessed it, they were mostly Mondays J ) but luckily those days were rare.
Oh, actually there are quite many bugs on our database, I didn’t notice there would be that many. It’s not that hard though, you spot a bug and then, you report it. Simple J

O: Samu, you have learned quickly and become really proficient programmer. Have you faced any really hard obstacles during this summer considering the game?

S: Well pretty much everything I’ve faced here has been something new. There have been some challenging tasks to be made, but nothing that I couldn’t eventually manage to do. There is definitely much to learn.

O: So, you’ve both learned a lot during the summer. Are you both tired from this summer’s task or do you still have that buzz for game development?

T: Yes, it has been kind of rough – mainly because of our relatively small project team, who are working with this game. Oh, and about the future in game development? Maybe..  But not before the next summer J

S: I’d like to keep working on game development in the future, but I want to finish my studies first. This summer has been pretty tiresome at certain times, and it sure would’ve been nice to have a vacation at some point. That’s the way things go sometimes…

O: As a final note I have to say, that besides being great future employess in game industry, you guys have also demonstrated great skills at Wii Sports’ Tennis.

T: Well, I’m nearly not as good as Samu.. Must be the fact that I’m so focused on Meerkats

S: Must be beginners luck. Golf isn’t that bad either. :p

O: Thank you for your time!