Continuing the Game Design Club for Middle School

Here are a few more resources from the virtual game design club I've been running at our middle school. If you want some background first, see my introduction and this first tip I shared with the students.

Last week I started a badge system and listed some achievements. This post explains how I make the badges and share them with students. As an example, the image at the right is a badge students can earn by telling me a few games they learned about after practicing Tip #1.

If we were meeting face to face I'd be playing new and unique games with them to help them expand their knowledge. As it is, I have to encourage research. I created this document to get them started. Some of those game suggestions came from designers I've been contacting. More information on my work with them will come in later posts.

I should add that it's been a big challenge to have to teach kids about games through reading and watching videos. I have not been effective at it so far, so I'm working on ways to improve that.

Finally, I introduced the Tip #2 video and asked them a few questions about it. The tip is to start keeping game ideas in a notebook. Not all designers do that, but it has been a practice of mine from the start and I find it invaluable. Here's the video.

And later this week I will post this video. It's the first part of an interview with Stephen Glenn, a friend and successful game designer who started taking the hobby seriously right about when I did. He's had several more games published over the past two decades than I have and I appreciated his willingness to share it with me and the club.

In this first four-minute interview he talks about why he still makes games (it's not for the money!) and he gives a little insight into how he gets ideas for games. We had some issues with video in our Google Meet, so most of the visuals in the interview are just slides summing up his points.