I've told the Singapore story something like a hundred times over the last few weeks, and I certainly enjoyed telling it every time and sharing in the excitement people had for me, but I thought I would lay it all out nice and clear here on my website for everyone to view.

In case you didn't know, I'm moving out of the country to the far off land of Singapore in early January. I'll be flying out in the early morning hours of January 2nd and will be gone for something like two years.

I work for DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond. It's an intense four-year (five, in my case, when I attended) course in what we call "Real-Time Interactive Simulation", with a heavy focus on games.

DigiPen has other campuses around the world, including Lebanon and Singapore. Open just two years ago, the Singapore campus hosts some of DigiPen's finest faculty and offers a similar course to what is taught in Redmond.

The Singaporean economy is booming and the government is helping it along as best it can. Many game development studios are moving to the country because of its technically capable population, for example, Ubisoft Singapore recently opened its 18th development studio in Singapore.

Ubisoft has been hiring Singaporean nationals and found that Computer Science (CS) majors from traditional four-year colleges had to be trained on-the-job for several months before they could really begin work. However, the company found that DigiPen graduates were ready to start right away and were highly capable. Ubisoft approached DigiPen with the Singaporean government in an effort to create a course that will prepare these graduates for working in the games or simulation industry.