Congrats Malorn, I'm sure you will have a blast designing games
My question to you: Besides PS what other games do you like to play? COD/BF style shooters? MMO's? Strategy perhaps? Name a few titles you enjoyed. Are you on console platform as well?
Btw: In case you're familiar with shooters like BF3, consider the following idea for your map designing assignment. One, big particular map in that game (Caspian Border) has proven to be working extremely well for all sorts of combat because of design principles like:
-infantry centric in the middle: relatively close bases, good infantry cover.
-vehicle oriented on the outside: wide open & exposed, more spaced out bases.
I'm not sure if such an idea would work on a PS 2 continent scale but at least I would be very excited to test out such a continent design as it would be a welcome deviation from the standard travel distances, deploy, travel distances, deploy -routine we mostly see in the current game.
Btw, I used to be a colleague of you (Microsoft Netherlands)