A PATNA gaming student is well on his way to turning his hobby into a career where he designs games for a living.

Ayrshire College Games Development student, Russell Anderson, 27, recently took part in Scotland’s biggest gaming exhibition, where he had a stand at Insomnia Gaming Expo in Edinburgh.

An entrepreneur from a young age, Russell started up his own gaming company from home four years ago.  As well as developing games, he regularly travels around Europe to gaming industry exhibitions, promoting his company and his latest designs.

Loraine Johnston, Curriculum Manager for Business & IT said: “Russell is a talented, self-taught games developer, who is extremely hard working and very focussed.  He has clear goals for his future in the games development industry and to help educate others.  Not only does he run his own games development company and study full time, he also mentors at the CoderDojo Ayrshire clubs.”

The club aims to promote computer science and technology in a fun, thought-provoking and inspiring way, encouraging young people to consider studying computing and recognise the rewarding opportunities available in the rapidly expanding ICT industry.

Russell said “I’ve been a computing nerd since I was about age six.  Now it’s become cool to be a gamer.  I’ve always found it interesting to design games and apps, so for me to help out at the college CoderDojo clubs is fantastic.  I enjoy helping the kids, teaching them about programming and coding and listening to what they want to do. For a lot of them, working in the gaming industry is a dream job too, but they don’t realise the amount of effort that actually goes into creating one.”

The future is bright for Russell.  Once he finishes at Ayrshire College, he is going on to a Games Application Development degree course at Abertay University. Russell has already had a pre-job interview with one of the biggest gaming companies in California, USA.  When he finishes his degree, he plans to work for them as a Server Architect, turning his passion into an exciting gaming career.