My name is Michael Jude Plesniarski. I am passionate about delivering memorable experiences to an interactive audience through games. I retired from a 20-year career as an actor and entertainer and found a different path to entertaining a different type of audience. I enjoy traveling and have been to over 20 countries. My favorite places that I’ve visited were Machu Picchu and the Amazon Rainforest.

I returned to Full Sail University to pursue my master’s degree in game design and learn more about indie development and the game development pipeline. When I took my bachelor’s degree, we mainly focused on Unreal Engine. While we did create “games,” they were just levels designed to create a play experience, and in my opinion, they were a far stretch from game design.

During my master’s degree program, I want to focus on organizing and managing a development team. This will help me better understand how to work with other departments and what they require from me as a producer to work productively. I also want to learn more about starting a company and the safest ways to protect my assets from legal issues arising during or after production.

I want to learn something in Unreal Engine: Gameplay Ability System (GAS). This system is very complex to set up and requires configuration in C++ before being further worked on as Blueprint nodes. It benefits many game genres and is worth investing time in learning correctly. Additionally, I would like to focus more on systems design and architecture, animation and sequences, and dynamic gameplay, such as creating combat systems.

I am also highly interested in networking with other students from different areas of study. I want to open my indie company upon graduation, and it would be great to have connections established and possibly even build a team of like-minded, talented people to work on external projects from Full Sail post-grad. I am also interested in building a social network on Discord to discuss hot topics in the industry and help others in areas where they could use tutoring. I plan to start a series on YouTube to teach beginners about game design, and additional influences on that endeavor are always welcomed.