BERNE — Berne-Knox-Westerlo salutatorian Kimberly Howland, 18, of Berne, is hoping to ride the wave of the Capital Region’s video game boom into a career that fuses her different interests. 
Howland will attend the Rochester Institute of Technology this fall to study video game design. 

Game development requires attention to both the technical design of the game as well as its artistic design. Howland is keen on both. 

“I can’t really say I have a favorite [area],” she told The Enterprise. “Part of the reason I chose game design as my degree is because it combined programming and art — my two main interests in high school.”

Fortunately for Howland, the Capital Region is becoming a destination for game studios big and small, with seven having set their roots here in the past year alone, according to Biz Journals. 

“There’s quite a few,” Howland said of local developers. “A lot of them are small, independent game studios, and then there’s others such as Vicarious Visions, Velan … Compared to some other gaming hubs, such as in California or Texas, it’s pretty small, but the Capital Region is continuing to grow, so that’s pretty cool.”

She said she hopes to come back to the Capital Region once she’s ready to enter the workforce — “If I can.” 

At BKW, Howland was active in the district’s esports club, which was founded in 2020, and last spring, she was able to tinker around with the Unreal Engine in a game design class. Unreal is what she’ll be working with at RIT, she said, and it’s the engine that many of today’s biggest games, like Fortnite, run on. 

Howland hasn’t designed a full game on her own yet, although she mentioned that she had entered into the Games for Change Student Challenge, for which she put together a “pretty simplistic game from scratch” that educated players about learning differences, based on a prompt that was offered. 

“I’m pretty proud of it,” she said. “It turned out pretty good.”

In addition to video game stuff, Howland also did theater at BKW, as well as belonging to the stock market club, yearbook club, cross country and track teams, among many others. When asked if she did all these different activities because it would be good for her college applications or if she’s just got a wide range of interests, she said it was the latter. 

“I never really liked the idea of doing activities solely for a résumé or college applications,” she said. “Every extracurricular I’ve done at school or outside of school has been something I’ve been interested in or wanted to try out.”

At RIT, Howland said she’ll have an opportunity to continue exploring all sorts of interests because of the variety of classes offered. 

“I think they have a comic studies concentration now,” she said. “They have numerous different languages, they have a whole bunch of computer science and security minors. It’s a wide range of things to choose from.”

Rochester also happens to be home to the video game hall of fame, part of the Strong National Museum of Play.

But before all that, Howland is going to try to enjoy her last summer break as a non-college student, while also getting ready for the big move. 

“There’s a lot to do,” she said, “and I’m certainly behind on it.”