My name is Adrián Navarro Pérez, I’m 23 years old, and since I was a kid, I have always wanted to make video games. My journey started when I first played on my father’s original PlayStation and on my Game Boy Color.

While all my friends were enjoying the reading of a good book or watching some cartoons, I was spending my days living between virtual characters who taught me a lot of ethics, morality, and all type of invaluable knowledge throughout the stories and challenges we were facing altogether. As my life progresses, every decision that I take is always made according to my life-time goal of becoming a game designer one day. After finishing my bachelor’s in Computer Engineering in Information Technologies in Elche, Spain, and thanks to an amazing Erasmus+ Studies experience in Zagreb, Croatia, I decided to study a master’s programme in video game development in a foreign country. Searching thoroughly a master’s programme which would meet my expectations and help me to meet my professional goals, I found and enrolled for the Game Design & Technology Master’s Programme at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, both based in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden.

During the first year of the master’s programme, I learnt how to love even more video games by re-discovering how they are made and how to make them fun and engaging. However, there was one thing that I was lacking at this point: professional experience. Thus, I was decided to work for the 2019 summer, taking advantage of the gap between the first and second year of my master’s. After sending a long amount of applications to every company that I admire, I was accepted in one that I did not expect: CERN. When I sent the application for the Summer Student Programme at CERN I never imagined that I was going to be accepted. But it is after getting accepted, when my story becomes wonderful thanks to my supervisor, Irene. I will never forget when she sent me an e-mail explaining to me what my project would be: Developing a video game about Beam Instrumentation at CERN for the Open Days 2019. I was completely shocked.

Developing video games at CERN, am I dreaming? It seems like I wasn’t. Here I have been able to explore the uncharted territory of physics, which I have always liked, thanks to all the incredible people that I have met at the same time that I have been doing what I like most: Create unforgettable experiences by developing video games for everyone. Finally, now I’m looking forward to taking the next leap in my professional career. I feel confident enough with myself and what I can offer to the game development industry, and all this confidence is thanks to CERN and the opportunity they gave me here. And you, what is your story?