LAFAYETTE — The gaming community tends to get roughed up online after major events rock major platforms. After this weekend's Fortnite outage, the social media world was in a frenzy, posting memes videos and embarrassing reaction videos from some players. Local gamers Devin Arton and Chase Viator say that those videos only show a small sub-sect of gamers and most aren't that hysterical. "There's always that type of person in any kind of environment you go to. People let any type of thing take over their lives, it could be video games for one person, drugs for the next, it could be just going out and partying," says Arton.
"It's being able to set aside like two to three hours a day to just kinda unwind and relax, while still getting that feeling of accomplishment," says Viator when describing why he gets online.
Gaming has also become a multi-billion dollar industry word-wide with more and more people turning to video games. Adam Folse, a Visual Effects Instructor at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment here in Lafayette, says, "it's actually become more of an acceptable lifestyle, you know it's less shunned. It's not for the nerds, now it's actually cool." The school trains students in video game design and development.
Gamers can actually make playing profitable, "We're seeing a lot more people getting into gaming development that are using those kinds of processes in their workflow," says Game Art and Animation Instructor Donald Gremillion.
Some of AIE's students have gone on to work on major motion pictures and best-selling video games. If you would like more information on their programs click HERE.
