Advice for the Next Generation

As an aspiring game designer, and quite young user of professional programs (like the Unreal Development Kit, Maya) what advice can Irrational give for said people, students, etc?

Hi colornerdy. Thanks for coming to IrrationalGames.com

As for advice, there are a couple things to do that I always found to help.
1. Start small. Jumping into something like UDK and hoping to make something amazing at first can be really frustrating and disappointing, so start small. Build your bedroom. Build your house. There are tons of great sites to help get over the learning curve of UDK, 3DBuzz being one of the better ones.
2. Play games. Yep, you should play games.
3. Take a great game and write how you would improve it, and not just 'the story could be better'. Breakdown the mechanics of the game, the pacing, and pulse of the game.

Hopefully some of that helps.