I wasn't really aware as a kid that game development was a career that I could have, especially from an artist's perspective." Pinnick is a VR Technical Artist for Google, where she's working on Playground, the company's augmented reality app. But three years ago, she was an art school graduate and self-taught virtual reality developer with an uncertain future at her feet. "I was playing games and I knew that there was art there," Pinnick said. "I just didn't put two and two together." Before graduating in 2015, Pinnick carved a unique path for herself at ArtCenter College of Design, a school that offered traditional art training but hadn't yet embraced programming as a creative outlet. In her final semester, it seemed like the school might never include game design in its degree offerings -- some teachers didn't even know how to hold a video game controller, let alone create an interactive, digital experience. "It's just not in their wheelhouse," Pinnick said in 2015.