My name is Max Blom. I went to GESS from 2008 until 2015. I started in GESS towards the end of 5th Grade and I graduated with an IB Diploma.
What has your learning journey after GESS been like?
As soon as I graduated from GESS, I started studying at NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda, the Netherlands which is now called Breda University of Applied Sciences. I started a Video Design Course with a focus on programming, but halfway through I switched to a programme with more of a design aspect: creating the ideas rather than implementing them. Upon graduating, I did not really want to enter the games industry right away, because I didn’t really feel like working for somebody. I wanted to experience my own journey first. I started doing videography while I was at school, because I bought a drone and I liked it and it was fun. That is how I ended up starting my own company as a videographer for about two years. That lasted me all through Covid. After that, my friend started a Video Game Studio and while we were talking about it, he could see that I had the knowledge, and so I was hired to be the Creative Director on the project. We did our funding which was a lot of fun. We are still working on it, but it’s a great experience.
In my role as Creative Director, I am responsible for a range of tasks. The first one is making sure that the game is going in the right direction: coming up with the concepts, finding ways to implement them while also making sure that the team is not overworked while meeting high levels of demand. My tasks also include coming up with new game concepts, things that we could add to our repertoire in the future, and of course, team management. I work closely with the creative team in order to manage the story-writing aspect of things. Since we are making a large open-world game, it makes sense that we need a large amount of writing to go with it and I would not be able to do all of it myself.
My favourite part of the job is probably travelling. I travel to a lot of conferences, meeting investors and other partners in order to make connections, and securing funds so we can keep doing this. So far having just worked with this company since October/November last year, we’ve already been to Mallorca in Spain, San Francisco, Los Angeles, we’re heading to Cyprus this weekend, next month we’re going to be in Austin, Texas and New York City, maybe even the Maldives for a small vacation in August. There’s a conference in Singapore coming up, so I will try to go and visit my mum who’s still there.
The only downside is the fact that we all work remotely. I therefore tend to sit at my desk in front of my computer quite often. To supplement that, I work as a DJ at night in local bars which is maybe 2, 3 nights a week so I can put all the social energy I have to good use.
What is your favourite memory of your time at GESS?
I lived on the East Coast and the school bus arrived early, I think around 6.30am every morning to beat all the traffic that happens between the East Coast and Bukit Timah. So we would end up at school around 20 minutes before classes started and I was always one of the first ones to arrive. I would sit in the forum, waiting for all my friends to show up one by one. Going from texting on my phone to then one friend joining, then the second, then all of a sudden I was surrounded by my friends and we just chatted. It was a great way to start every morning. As you probably guessed, I’m a very sociable person, so being at home was ok, but at school I had so many people to talk to about so many different things.
I also still like visiting the school until today. I don’t know who’s still there from the friends I made among the staff members. Last time I was there I had a really great chat with Alison Samuels. Ms Samuels was great. At school we had chats like we had been friends for 50 years. And Ms Frau Verry, the best German teacher ever, by far. I’m still very much able to go to Germany and speak German, purely thanks to her. And not forgetting Mr Thomas Walton was just a fantastic teacher and a great guy to talk to. A great community!
What do you miss most about your time at GESS?
What I probably miss the most is everyone coming together in one place to achieve individual versions of the same goal (graduating). As I mentioned, I work remotely, so I spend a lot of time talking to people on the computer and that’s fine, but I just heard this morning that we got an office, so I will be in an office soon. It’s going to be a lot of fun and we will have more people coming in so maybe that kind of “being together” feeling will come back.
I also miss having a lot less responsibility in life, not having to worry about rent and money for food for example.
Did you have any favourite spots on campus or in Singapore?
The forum, right up the stairs. I really enjoyed the top floor of the C-Block, above the library. I spent a lot of time in the library as well. Me and the librarians were very good friends.
And within Singapore, Cathay Cineleisure was somewhere I would go very often. Between the age of 13 to 16 I liked going to the movie theatres and the arcade there with my friend Jack to play some games and talk about life.
We all still keep in contact actually. We’ve got a group chat going on with me and my friends Sebastian and Naski. We still talk every couple of days, we meet up once a year, we make an effort to do it at least. We had to miss one due to Covid, but last year we met up and this year I will go see Seb in Montreal. I am also in a group chat with the guys from my drama class.
Do you think your time in Singapore and your time at GESS had an impact on your life?
I think it definitely had an impact on who I am now, the social person that I’ve become. There were a lot of situations at GESS that taught us how to take charge of things and get things done, like throwing a class party or getting some supplies from art class to finish an art assignment. You know these sort of little memories that I hold on to and that helped me become who I am these days: being very innovative with the way you do things and just to take a look at things from a more creative approach.
When I started my first day at uni, we had a curriculum switch. We were the first year with a new curriculum and everyone was panicking, they didn’t know what was going on. I was the only relaxed person, because I had learned that things will clear up at some point. In the same class we received a document detailing what we had to do over the course of the semester. I went to the last page and found the rubric, because it had been drilled into my head at GESS to read the rubric. It’s basically a cheat-sheet on how to pass, it tells you what you have to do. I read that rubric, I understood it. I was one of only seven students who had never programmed before in a class of 70 students, so 10% of us did not know how to programme. Of those seven, one sat down and learned how to programme really quickly which is very hard work. I think he didn’t sleep for a whole two months. The other five left the class soon and all I had to do was read the rubric and show proof that I learned something. So while everyone worked on big giant assignments, because they knew how to programme, I didn’t know and I submitted this tiny little mini game and was told it was not enough. However, I was able to point to the rubric and the requirements for passing the class. So I sat there in my meeting with them as they read their own rubric and had to admit I was right and that I fulfilled the requirements. All thanks to the fact that for eight years straight someone kept banging on my head with a hammer at GESS saying ‘read the rubric’!
What did you learn during your time at GESS that you learned to appreciate in hindsight?
I wouldn’t say it’s anything that is taught necessarily, it’s mostly realising the lucky situation that I was in, being in an international community surrounded by people who are then going to go all over the world, with whom you can make friends with. In any city I go to now, I know someone there whom I can meet up with. In addition, it was the experience of all of us coming together in a nice warm climate, go to a fun school with fun teachers that we might just not have appreciated so much at that moment.
Obviously I’m looking back with rose-tinted glasses right now. I was not a very good student. School is not for me at the end of the day, I realise that now and I hope that for other people who feel similar: just do your thing and know that there are a lot of opportunities to do really cool stuff in university. I never had a single exam at university, it was all project-based learning. I did nothing but make games for four years straight and it was phenomenal. But I think during my time at school I just couldn’t appreciate very much the opportunity that I had and the environment that I was in. Just purely because I was worried about getting good grades.
Is there any advice that you would like to share with our current students?
If I have to summarise everything that I have experienced from GESS until now into one piece of advice – and this might feel a bit weird – but I honestly believe very strongly in having the confidence to do something and “fake it ‘till you make it”. Obviously, this does not include life or death situations! But there have been so many situations in which I’ve been given an opportunity and I just grabbed on to it and now I have this awesome life and I do cool stuff every day, just because I took a chance. For example, I bought a drone because I thought it was cool. I’ve never even held a camera in my hands before, but someone asked me if I could film a DJ in a club and I said yes. And then I figured out how. I borrowed a camera from school, I spent three days learning how to film with it and then I shot a genuinely terrible video. Luckily, the DJ and I are now best friends, he realised I had some talent and potential and he decided that he wants to put me under his wing. Just because I took the chance. And someone took a chance on me as well. So that’s my second piece of advice: Be likeable. Don’t be weird.
