Today, we started our morning with a visit to Glass Egg, which is a game creation company. They render objects, characters, and environments for video games. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this visit too much compared to the others, but I was pleasantly surprised. Their main focus is rendering vehicles for motorsport games, which aligns with my overall interest in motorsports. Their longest partnership is with Forza, which was really cool to me since I have spent a lot of time playing both Forza Horizons and Forza Motorsport. I think the focus on motorsport is also very important to their business. By carving out a niche for themselves, they are better able to function in such a competitive industry. They have a solid and specific portfolio to effectively convince producers of motorsport games that they are uniquely qualified to do their rendering. Having found and established a space for themselves in the industry, I think that their biggest challenge going forward will be AI. In the discussion, they mentioned that they firmly believe in the superior abilities of human artists, but that they are using some AI to help them come up with ideas. I found this take very interesting, because in my opinion ideation is the stage where human artists hold the biggest advantage. I agree that human rendering work is better than AI at this stage, but I personally would be very hesitant to use AI at all in the ideation stage of any creative project, because it cannot really come up with something new and unique the way a human can. I imagine that producers might not be so focused on the integrity of the art, though, so Glass Egg might struggle to continue to keep clients, especially smaller producers.

After our company visit, we went to UEF for a language class and then a culture class. In language class, we learned how to shop at markets as practice for when we go to Ben Thanh Market next week. In culture class, we tried some traditional Vietnamese desserts. They were delicious, and I noticed that they were far less sweet than typical American desserts. We then learned two games, the first of which reminded me of jacks and the second of which was a betting game.

For dinner, I got to try broken rice, which I had with pork belly. Both the rice and the pork were amazing. I really enjoyed the texture of the broken rice, and I would say I prefer it to other rice that I have had. It was a great ending to a great day!