About

portrait done by teammate

I'm Jason Kilkenny, currently a senior at DigiPen Institute of Technology. I'll be graduating with a BS in Real-Time Interactive Simulation, which is computer science with a focus on games. I've covered all and more of what you'd expect from a Bachelor CS degree in addition to techniques you'd rarely find used outside of games. I have mostly focused on graphics and game mechanics coding, but I'm also interested in creating AI systems and tools.

I grew up in the suburbs Far Rockaway, NY, about a mile away from J.F.K. Airport (if you had a boat anyway). My first game system was a Sega Genesis that came with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I found a great love of games with that system, building up my Genesis library, obtaining an NES and SNES a year later. In high school I was introduced to the wonders of C++ and realized that this was what really powered games. I liked what I was doing in that class and ended up taking another programming class in Java and Visual Basic. While I did get to make small games using both, I didn't enjoy it as much. That's when I found out about Digipen and made the decision to study out here in Redmond.

Aside from programming I do a lot of other things on the side. I've been self-studying Japanese after taking it in high school for 3 years. I've been translating Japanese manga for practice and as a hobby since I got back from a 3 month exchange in Okinawa in 2004. I recently started playing the bass, thanks to some friends from music club. I used to play piano and violin, but it's been a while since I've touched either.