McEwin, a self-described “video game developer and publisher of music games,” now works for Seven45 Studios. He recently worked on Power Gig, a Rock Band-like game that uses a real electric guitar.

McEwin says he began his work in the game industry at the age of five as a “board-game tester”. At eleven years old, he began to enter “maps and mods” for various video games into online competitions, and he has never left the industry.

From his viewpoint as a video game designer, McEwin sees the gaming industry getting bigger and bigger. According to him, gaming will be a $68 billion dollar industry in the next ten years, and 68% of American households play games.

“The average gamer is 35 years old,” he told Wayland students. “The largest portion of gamers is women more than 18 years old.” He described women age 18 and older as the “gold mine” gaming group. “These are the Sims players, the Facebook app users,” he said.

So just what is making video games like? According to McEwin, it’s a stressful business. “You could be working on a game for six months,” he said, and then if management decides to terminate the project, “you’ll have to just drop it.”

From start to finish, McEwin says, game making is a labor-intensive process. “Crunch is going from working 40 hours a week to working 100 hours a week,” he said. “For Power Gig, we crunched from December to almost the end of August.”

McEwin closed his presentation with a few words of advice for prospective game designers. The bottom line? “Just start making games.”