Transferable Skills and AI Literacy Earn Game Studio Students a Big Win

Ayden Brumley and Arija Hartel are third-year Game Studio Experience students, and this summer, they’ve extended their worldviews and professional skills beyond the gaming industry, all the way to Bangkok, Thailand, and the agriculture industry.

Supported by the Freeman Grant, which provides select students the opportunity to intern in a major Asian city, they interned more than 8,500 miles away from home, spending eight weeks working with a French and Thai-based aquaculture company called Aqua Baan.

Upon arrival, they were tasked with integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the company’s aquacultural knowledge base, with the goal of helping employees easily access company information in a chatbot-style environment. And while this challenge may seem like a departure from their work in the Game Studio Experience, Champlain’s emphasis on AI literacy and transferable skills served them well for the task.

This spring, Champlain announced a partnership with Anthropic, a leader in AI safety and research, that provides students free access to Claude AI. “During our research phase, we landed on the use of Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.0 as the LLM backbone for our AI-powered knowledge base. Claude Sonnet 4.0 stood out from all the competition we analyzed, with its strong capabilities in the languages we need—French, English, and limited Thai—plus strong document comprehension,” Brumley explained.

“What sealed the deal for us was its reliability in ensuring secure deployment, thanks to advanced security features and easy API integration. All of this incredible functionality comes at an affordable price point that worked perfectly for a small business like Aqua Baan.”

Hartel, a Game Programming and Interactive Narrative for Games & Digital Media student, took the lead on the more technical aspects of the project, specifically deploying a working Claude model for the company. Brumley, a business-centered Game Production Management student, took on more of the communication and research work for the project.

“Throughout this process, we actively negotiated with stakeholders to truly understand their needs and desires, while sharing what is possible within our scope to lead well-informed strategic decisions,” Brumley said.