We recently connected with David Fang and have shared our conversation below.

David, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is there a lesson you learned in school that’s stuck with you and has meaningfully impacted your journey?

There’s a project I did in a game design class which had a big impact on me. It was a board game project I collaboratively designed with 2 other classmate. I was so excited about this assignment, and at that time I was also lack of experience of cooperating with other designers. So, I tended to take over the whole conversations during the ideation and development process, denying other teammates’ ideas and suggestions, which made my 2 teammates very angry about this collaboration.

The project was naturally failed in the end. After the project was done, I talked with my instructor about this. What he told me turned out to be the most important lesson I learned from the school. He told me that, David, it’s totally fine to put your passion and efforts into a team project, and even take over it, but you have to do it in a respectful way. A team should have a rule or an agreement, and you have to follow it as well as the general rules in the communication between people in our civilized world. And the most important thing among all these, is respect. After this conversation, I started to pay attention to every communication and collaboration between my teammates, trying to be respectful and thoughtful to other people and their opinions.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi, I am David, a game designer and content creator, my interests include video games, board games, film, photography and digital arts, and so many other stuffs. I am currently pursuing my MFA degree in Game Design at NYU Tisch School of Art.

– Cloud Atlas

My journey start with a movie, Cloud Atlas, which I watched in my high school and changed my life completely. I remember it was an afternoon, I sat at home, experiencing the shock and inspiration brought by the movie, without moving a single finger of mine for an entire 3 hours. The movie provides a new perspective for me to know about the world, and also made me realize the charm of film itself as a media to present inspiring stories. I was impacted, and impacted by this process of impaction. Since then I decided to be a creative media creator that use my work to inspire other people. The formation of this goal led to my choice of Digital Media Technology as my major in my undergraduate study.

– Bachelor in Digital Media

I have my undergrad degree in Beijing, China, where I learned a lot of practical knowledge and skills in the field of digital technologies, such as programming, image crafting, video production, game development, graphic design, and so on. My major focus was on video production, since my inspiration is film. I did lots of practice in short film direction, script writing, video shooting, editing, and photography. I tried a lot of things in this period, trying to find a path to the career of impacting other people, my position in this field, and most importantly, trying to learn more about myself —— my real passion, what my style is, and what kind of story I would like to tell. After 4 years of study, I still fill I am very scarce in this field. So I decided to apply for grad school and bring my practice further.

– Film school, COVID, and game

Originally, I wanted to be on the track of a film director, since that’s my first inspiration, so I applied a lot of film school in US (mostly in the west coast), and was accepted by some of them, like Art Center College of Design. However, at the time of my first semester, COVID happened, I was unable to fly to US and start my semester. Also, before my graduation of undergrad, I did some internships at film companies, in which I felt very crunch and the environment is not creative at all. I also felt uncomfortable for some of the day to day job I was doing when I was directing my own independent films. As a result, I decided to quit my film program at Art Center and shift to another track I am also very interested in, the video games.

– Video Games

Video game is part of my life. During my undergrad, I played lots of different kinds of video games. Some I played independently and some with my friends, which made me feel like this is more like a daily passion for me. After I canceled my film program , I got a job in game industry as a visual designer, and was applying game programs in grad schools. I learned a lot about game industry in my professional practice in the company. A year later, I quit my job and started to learn more about video game development techniques and make my own independent games, until I got accepted to NYU Game Center, which is where I am right now.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

As far as I can think about, Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: A brief history of humankind” is the book that inspires me most in this area. Yuval states that sapiens came to dominate the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, and this ability arises from its unique capacity to believe in things existing purely in the imagination. This is a very inspiring concept from a fresh perspective to me, and I think it triggers me to think about the deep but vague reason of human collaboration. I’ve gained a further appreciation for the fundamental drivers of human behavior, which is crucial in both managing teams and navigating entrepreneurial ventures.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think for me, the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is I get to know a lot more about myself during the process of creation. When I follow my intuition or try to rationally discover my own tastes and styles, they always help me reveals part of myself, and get to know more about my personalities and how are they form deeply.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.davidfangzy.com
• Instagram: fzyentropy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfangzy/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/shatlyor