Game Designer Interview and Original Digital Games Activity

This is part of a series of posts about the Game Design Club I am running for middle schoolers while school is closed.

Participation in the club was waning, so I made a simple activity for this week that asked students to play some digital games created in Scratch and answer some questions about them. It was meant to help them practice my Tip #1 (play and learn about as many games as possible). It also gives them a good idea what type of things they could program using Scratch.

Here's a copy of that activity.

I also finished up the first part of a second game designer interview this week. I'm really excited to share this one here and in the club. 

It's with my friend Dominic Crapuchettes. As I say in the interview, he is definitely one of the most talented, dedicated and successful game designers I know. His experience and skill is invaluable and I was so grateful he took the time to help us this way. Please watch the video and share it with anyone interested in the hobby of creating games.

In Part 1 of the interview, Dominic talks about why he's still making games and he shares three "templates" that he has used to create new, original games.

I plan to share the second part of this interview next week.

8 things I emphasize in game design lessons

I love games, I make games of various types and I work with educational technology in a middle school.  This means I often have very excited students (usually boys) telling me their dreams of making computer games.  

On one hand I love their passion and I try to encourage them.  I have used it at times to motivate some otherwise very unmotivated students.

At the same time, I am wary of presenting a false picture of what it takes to make a successful (or even a good) game.  "Making it" with games (like any creative venture) can be frustrating.  I don't take it lightly when dealing with their hopes and dreams along with the very real possibility of failure.

I don't always have the chance to teach the class or guide all the aspects of the game design lessons when I'm supporting the classroom teacher.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I'm just in the room and working with the students.  From my experience as a game designer and my time with these students, though, here are the top 8 things I always emphasize in game design lessons.

1)  Don't think about money.  Don't even think you could live off any game you make.  Whether a card game, board game or computer game, you'll most likely invest hours of time and make no money at all.  Most people who make games do not make enough to live off them.  That's reality.

I've made a couple party games that have sold all over the world and I made very little money at it.  Most of my friends who have made games, some a lot more successful than mine, still keep their day jobs.  I make it a personal goal to never talk about the money.

2)  Approach it as a hobby and think about the people who will enjoy your game.  If you have fun with it and are grateful when you see others enjoy your work that is a great reward.  Remember that your work can inspire others, make someone smile or bring good friends together.  Those are great things and if you enjoy doing it, keep doing it.

In fact, I'd even go so far as to say if you're good at it, you should do it.  Sometimes when I wanted to give up on a game I'd push through simply because I felt a responsibility to see that idea go as far as it possibly could.

3)  Game design is work.  It seems like you'd get to play all day, but there are plenty of parts to the process that you won't enjoy.  They won't seem fun.

If we're talking computer games, there is a lot of work up front before you'll even be able to play a game of any complexity.  Learning to program is not easy.  Some applications make it easier than it used to be, but if you really want to build a game from the ground up it's going to require hours of learning, programming and testing.

I have programmed for years and just my simple Flash game, Pegged, about made my head explode when I tried to do the scoring piece.  Seriously, I had to get away from all people and noise, staring at my notes until it hurt.  No one gets that until they've seen it, but trust me.  It takes work.

4)  Know the difference between a dream and a wish...and make sure you're following a dream.  This applies to a lot more than game design, but it's good to throw this in.

When we wish for things we think about the end result--maybe we think about it too much--and we would love to somehow get to that without any real work.  We know we really want that end result.  It would be great and we'd be so happy to see it come true.  But it's a wish because it's a fantasy.  The end doesn't happen without the work.

To me, a dream is more realistic and worth working for.  Maybe some would call this a goal or a plan, and those calculated terms can comes into play, but I like to call it a dream.  It still involves the heart.  It's great to dream, but work toward the dream.  

I always say girls wish that One Direction would stop by their house when they're in town.  Boys wish they could make a living making computer games.  Both are about as unlikely.  Dream, but live in the real world!

5)  It is good to play many games, but do it with design in mind.  The fun part of the hobby of game design is that the "research" can be playing games.  I try to play as many as I can.

When you play, though, don't get so caught up in the playing that you forget about why you're taking the time to do it.  Learn what works and what doesn't.  Watch how the game affects others.  Think about what you understand and what you don't.  Make sure you know what makes something fun.  

Along with this, read about as many games as you can too.  Read reviews of good and bad games that you probably won't be able to play.  Read the rules or details of games from genres or styles you don't like.  Even though you don't actually play them, you'll still learn a ton.  Know what people have done and try to find the areas that are yet unexplored.

6)  Read articles and watch videos about game designers and the design process.  Austin Kleon, in his book Steal Like an Artist, says we do this not to get their ideas, but to get the thinking behind their ideas.

Look into the people who make your favorite games and figure out what makes them tick.  Read interviews about people who made successful games you don't really like.  What led to the decisions that resulted in those games?

When you read their stories you should get a better idea of what I meant about all the work that goes into it.  You will almost never hear a designer say that a game just fell in place.

7)  Record all your ideas for games.  You'll never be able to make them all and many of the ones you try to make won't really work.  Still, every idea is worth keeping because:

• In any art you should form the habit of getting and recording as many ideas as possible.
• It very well can be useful in another way at another time.

Watch my video on how to make games if you're interested in hearing more about keeping a game idea notebook.  (There are a few other good tips in that two part series as well!)

8)  Keep producing while the others play.  Never just play.  This might sound a lot like tip #5 above, but it encompasses all your research, play and work on game design.

If you do the things listed above, you'll be working on your craft even when it feels like you're having some fun.  You'll be getting better every day while others are playing and that's a huge edge.  

Links to resources

I usually make board and card games, so I am mostly familiar with those resources.  Here are a few starting points based on the steps above and some are related to computer games as well.

• Designer interviews at Fair Play Games - I interviewed a lot of board game designers several years ago.  Their tips on design can still be useful.
• Tips for Success from Dominic Crapuchettes - Dominic is the most successful game designer that I know personally.  He worked hard to bring his dreams to life and he's enjoying the rewards.  
• Tom Vasel's game designer interviews - Tom interviewed many game designers over the years.  Here they are compiled on the Boardgame Geek website.
• The Boardgame Geek - Speaking of this site, it's a great place to learn about tons of games (good and bad) throughout the ages.  They have subsections of the site devoted to video games and role playing games too.
• Inspiring Creativity - Here's a post I wrote in 2012 about a friend of mine who creates iOS games.  Be sure to read Kory's post about how he made Blockhouse.  It's a great example of the work that goes into even a "simple" game.
• Meeting with experts - Last school year two of my designer friends met with some of my students in a Google Hangout.  I wrote about that experience and some of their tips in this post.
• My posts on game design - This is not the most organized way to find the information, but the link will take you to all the posts tagged "computer game programming" from this blog.  
• Making What's It to Ya? - Here's my fairly detailed account of how one of my most popular games became an idea in my head and went around the world.  Here's the brief story as a video.
• How to Make Games - I linked to this above, but wanted to put it here two.  Part 1 and Part 2 of this presentation can be found on YouTube.  They haven't been very popular, but I gave away some gems in there, in my opinion!

What I learned in education in 2012

2012 was a good year for a lot of progress in ed-tech in the district where I work.  More teachers are getting it.  We had more video projects, iPads and flipped teaching than ever.  We even started using Google Apps for Education at our middle school.

Here are the things I learned and related posts for each:

• Video game design integrates perfectly with science at the middle school level.
• Creativity exercises are fun and popular!  Teachers always ask me back and my most visited posts by far are the ones based on the exercises and games I created.
• In fact, I'm convinced creativity is the oil in the education machine.  Without it, the system grinds to a halt by high school.  With it, students are engaged and more willing to work through problems.
• Every class can be taught within the framework of creative problem solving and the students buy in.
• Poke the Box is a great book that had a huge impact on me.  My first attempts at computer (Flash) game programming are a direct result.  See What's It to Ya?, Pegged and Factor Duel.
• Instructing with video is very effective.  It makes me a better teacher too as I have to focus on my presentation so much more as I record and edit.

All things considered, the Classroom Creativity Game sums up most of what I learned this year.  From my video lessons (created with Explain Everything) about the related presentation to the creation of the generic, versatile webpage itself, I'm excited to hear feedback and improve the resource over the upcoming months.

Classroom Creativity Game - Why Did the Chicken...?

As I posted a few days ago, here's a computer version of the creativity game Why Did the Chicken...?, originally designed as a party game by Kory Heath.

The format of this game is similar to many of the classroom creativity games I have featured on this site.  This one just lets everyone play on the computer.  It could be a fun warm-up or wrap-up exercise after one of the flipchart games based on that system.

Check out the page and please share the link with other teachers.

http://bit.ly/wdtcgame

If you like it, let me know and I'll put a few other of the creativity games into this format.

And while I'm at it, here's a reminder about my Mythology Edition of Why Did the Chicken...? in flipchart format.  It's been my most popular classroom activity this summer from Promethean Planet.

Computer Game Design in the Classroom - Stencyl as a tool for creating Flash games

I've been briefly highlighting some computer game creation tools over the past week.  The first two articles are here:

• Gamestar Mechanic
• App Inventor

For this installment I want to focus on my current resource of choice:

Stencyl

Update 2/2/2014:  I recently posted a review of a book that will be great resource for learning Stencyl:  Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development. If you are considering using Stencyl in class or if you are just learning the program, I recommend the book.

I wrote recently about Stencyl and I have featured a few games I created.  For now, I'll briefly touch on my experience, the pros and cons and why I like this tool the best.

My Experience
My first attempt to use Stencyl was met with frustration, but I revisited it this summer after I realized they updated to version 2.0.  They also expanded some of the documentation.  Those changes helped me to understand the elements and I was able to create a few games.  Two of them are hosted here on the Stencyl Arcade.

Like many other tools, users arrange code blocks rather than typing all the lines of a program.  That's generally a nice touch, though sometimes blocks are annoying.  I'm used to the old fashioned way!

But even if a user finds the blocks to their liking, it's not exactly easy to make a game.  It is probably easy to modify some existing games that are available, and that's a great place to start, but to create a game from scratch requires a lot of logic and planning.  And that doesn't even involve actually learning the elements of Stencyl itself.

For example, my games were simple in the fact that I did not need to handle collisions or many different "scenes" based on player interaction.  I made some simple card games.  The computer never had to respond with anything that resembled AI.  Animations were very simple.

But the logic behind some scoring elements made my head spin.  Dealing with lists (arrays) can always be an exercise in the abstract, but that along with how they're handled in Stencyl was a challenge for me.  My son, who will be in seventh grade this year, was surprised by the complexity of that part of the code.  He wasn't even interested in learning what it did or how I figured it out.  I know most students around that grade level would feel about the same toward it.

It's a simple fact that creating a decent game can be difficult on many levels.  It will be time consuming and require a lot of thought.  If anyone doubts this, they should read a few posts in the forums at Stencyl.  I can't even understand many of the technical discussions.

But why do I prefer it over other tools?  Because I am able to make games that are easily played online...at least with a computer.  Here are the positives and negatives in brief.

Positives

• Stencyl can make a great variety of games.  Even with the free version, one can make action games, puzzle games, card games, etc.  There are limits, but compared to Gamestar Mechanic this offers a universe of options for students to explore.
• The free version makes Flash games that can be played online.  While Flash isn't good for iPads or other mobile devices, it provides more accessibility for free than the other game creation tools that I explored.  
• There is fairly good documentation to get started.  It's not perfect and I didn't find anything geared specifically for educators yet, but it was helpful.  The forums also provide good support for new game designers.  I didn't use the video tutorials, but they do have some created by users that might be helpful for budding programmers.  

Negatives

• As I mentioned above, a game of any complexity is still going to take some serious work.  Besides just the logic and learning Stencyl itself, gathering or creating graphics and sound effects was a big job even for my simple games.
• It boasts the ability to make iOS games, but that will be costly.  You have to buy the Pro version and you need to pay for Apple's developers program as well.  Realistically for many schools, Flash games are about all you'll get out of this.

So for me the positives clearly outweighed those couple negatives.  I'm thrilled with what I learned and that I now have a few computer games that I can use in the classroom this year.

My biggest lesson so far is that I really can appreciate the work that goes into making a great computer game!  From graphics to sound to the programming itself, it's demanding.  Hopefully more students will see this and their desire to make games will motivate them to that level of effort.

Creativity Computer Game - beta testing

Here's a draft of a creativity game I created.  It's another pass & play game for three to five players, this time based on Kory Heath's hilarious Why Did the Chicken...?

If it works well, the engine can be adapted to many of the creativity games I have on this site.

Check out the page and please share and give feedback if it looks promising.

http://bit.ly/wdtcgame

Computer Game Design in the Classroom - Gamestar Mechanic

I have written extensively about Gamestar Mechanic, but I want to address it briefly here as I'm doing a series of tools for using computer game design in the classroom.

This series stems from my desire to motivate students based on their passions.  I am exploring some ways to do that with computer game design.  My first post focused on App Inventor.  Today I'll look at the application I have the most classroom experience with.

Gamestar Mechanic

The developers of Gamestar Mechanic have done the best job that I've seen of making their program accessible for students.  In fact, it is intended to be a tool for learning.  It integrates the process of learning the program and learning game design very well.  This opens the door to integration within several content areas.  While I have not yet been as successful as I'd like with that next step, I see the potential.  Any shortcomings I have experienced in that regard make me wonder if there's any hope for this with more complex options, but that is what I still need to explore.

My Experience with Gamestar Mechanic
As I said, these projects are explained at length in other places on this blog or my other website, so I will just link to them here.

I developed a project in a science class last year that integrated game design, various technology tools and the study of ecosystems.  It's one of the more popular stops for visitors to my blog.  Here's an overview of it.

I also explored the possibility of integrating it with math lessons at the 5th and 6th grade level.  Specifically, I saw an application for reinforcing the concepts of proportions, rates and ratios.  I wrote about that experience here.


Positives

• Gamestar Mechanic is on the low end of the complexity scale for teachers and students.  That makes it great to highlight game design concepts without letting the "how to" questions get in the way.
• It very nicely weaves how to use the system and how to make a good game all in one teaching and playing experience.  Students who pay attention to the learning while they work through the lessons have very few questions.
• I have seen it appeal to boys and girls in grades 5 - 8.  It blends play and creation in a way that almost all students enjoy it.
• Several resources for teachers are available.  As I mentioned, this tool was clearly created with the classroom in mind.

Negatives

• Its simplicity also amounts to a lot of limitations on the type of games students can create.  Some will say they're not actually making games, but just creating levels of an open-ended game by tweaking options for all the characters.
• Games are Flash based only.  Since the whole application is Flash based, it's not a big deal that you are limited to computers.  Everything will be made on a computer, so students won't mind just playing on their computers.  Unlike other options I'll examine, there's no hope of getting the games on iOS devices or as stand alone executable files even through additional paid features.
• Most importantly to note, it takes most students a long time to work through the levels.  Students earn the ability to make games by completing the game challenges.  If they don't get far enough they simply can't use all the tools.  If they aren't playing at home, it takes a lot of class time for some to get to that point.  Most teachers in a content area will not sacrifice class time to allow students to do this.

In conclusion, if a teacher wants to explore game design concepts, there's no better introduction than Gamestar Mechanic.  It opens the door to integration with content area topics, but in that case the teacher will have to give up a few days of class to allow students to work through the levels.

This very concisely brings me to the main question of all of this.  Can computer game design be a useful tool for all teachers and all learners?

For all the excitement I see in the students and for my own interests in game design, I want to believe it has value.  But repeatedly I have seen the fun of the games and the requirements to learn the tools and the game design concepts so easily obstruct the other learning.

My current plan is to find ways to teach the game design concepts and tools in one class, then get content area teachers to integrate those aspects into their lessons.  Until I can arrange that, I can't confidently recommend such an undertaking, even with this simple tool, to a content area teacher.

Computer Game Design in the Classroom - App Inventor

I try to focus a lot on passion in this blog.  On the job I want to motivate students by appealing to their passions.

I find this to be most difficult when working with teen boys.  While there are certainly some tough cases, my difficulty is rarely due to my inability to identify their passions.  It's usually the challenge of bridging the gap between their interests and the required curriculum.

I know many these male students are very passionate about video games.  When I ask them what they want to study in our digital media courses, they often tell me they want to learn to make games.  (It is not limited to just the boys, but it is always the boys more than girls.)

It seems like game design could be an ideal motivator.  On top of that, it's my hobby too.  But somehow I have yet to find a good way to make video game creation accessible to all students in a way that meets all requirements of the courses in which I am working.  I've been exploring the options more this summer and I will post a few brief conclusions I've formed about some tools at our disposal.

Lesson plans and course flow are in the works too, but for now I'll start with the programming tools.

MIT App Inventor
I am starting with this one because it is 100% free.

My Experience
I used App Inventor for my own studies in a graduate course last year.  I have not tried to use it with students yet.

I was able to make a playable game quite easily with this program, but it did not look great.  I made no effort to explore the graphic capabilities.  Also, my game was not an action "video game" in the usual sense.  It was a fairly simple two-player game that involved selecting options.

Here's a video demonstrating the game.  I show it on the Android simulator in the video, but I did play the game on a phone as well.  (I have to love that one comment a user posted for it!  As a former math teacher, I'm used to less than pleasant sentiments expressed by the unimpressed.)

And here's the classroom project that it was derived from.

Positives

• It is quite simple to get started with App Inventor.  I have years of programming experience, so that probably helped.  The list of options are small, intuitive and well documented, though, so I found it to be the easiest application to take the game from concept to playing it on a device.
• Unlike most programs that allow you to create for mobile devices, it's free.  Being able to play their games on their phones should appeal to many students.
• Many resources are available for educators.  I have a lot of exploring to do in that area of their website.

Negatives

• It only works on Android devices.  You can test it on a simulator if you don't have a phone, but there's no option to post playable versions online.
• Testing was a little slow with the Android simulator.  The debugging process could get frustrating with small fixes and significant wait times to see what worked and what didn't.
• Files were quite large.  Even my simple games had relatively large files and when I tested them on my phone last year things were sluggish sometimes. 

For all the good I see in this program, I am not focusing on it as a possibility this year in school, mostly for the reasons listed as negatives above.  If you have more experience with App Inventor I will be glad to hear additional thoughts on this.

For my next installment, I will provide some thoughts on a resource I have more classroom experience with.

Programming with Stencyl - How will it work in the classroom?

Update 2/2/2014:  I recently posted a review of a book that will be great resource for learning Stencyl:  Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development. If you are considering using Stencyl in class or if you are just learning the program, I recommend the book.

Last year I tried to use Stencyl to program some Flash games for a graduate project.  It promised to be a flexible tool for making many types of games and several examples were offered that proved even teenagers could use it.  Like Scratch, App Inventor and GameMaker, it simplified the task of coding by using blocks that snap in place.

Unfortunately I was so confused by the application that I gave up.  I had some success with App Inventor prior to this, but Stencyl made no sense...until I came back to it this summer.

In version 2.0 they introduced Events as an element of programming.  Previously everything was done as Behaviors and I couldn't make those work.  This summer I gave it another try and the Events made sense to me.  I'm sure I'm programming very inefficiently at times, since I completely ignore Behaviors (which I guess are reusable sets of Events), but I am able to make games.  I'm happy.

I got lost for many enjoyable hours this summer while creating this Flash version of What's It to Ya?.  I felt like a kid exploring my old Commodore VIC20 thirty years ago.

But my own interests aside, the big question I need to answer is whether or not I would use this in the classroom.  I will be working with some digital media courses at the high school and middle school levels this year.  I know many of the students will want to make games.  Is Stencyl going to make that possible?

The short answer for me is not yet.  I simply have not figured out how to introduce students to complex programming tools like this.  In the past, when I taught very simple computer programming, I would provide some projects to get them started.  In this case, though, much of the learning would have to be done on their own.  After a few weeks of exploring they will be beyond my own skill level.  Knowing the students that we generally get in these classes, their desire to make video games will far exceed their logical reasoning and patience for learning about, building and debugging programs.  I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is that many will not be disciplined enough to proceed on their own.

(As an example of complexity, the What's It to Ya? game I programmed was very simple in the fact that it had just a few Scenes and movable objects.  I didn't have to concern myself with things colliding or animated characters.  Still, figuring out how to calculate the scores for a round really taxed my brain.  I admit I'm out of practice on programming in general, but even once I figured out how I'd do it with other languages I had a very hard time putting it into Stencyl.  After a few frustrating hours I had to admit that I only know of two or three students I have taught in 18 years who would have worked that hard to learn something new.)

If a few students are capable and moving ahead in the class I would start with Gamestar Mechanic at the middle school level instead of Stencyl.

At the high school level...I'm still undecided.  Scratch seems like a good starting point for actual programming, but most examples I have seen make it look like it's aimed at a younger audience.  I need more experience with GameMaker to be able to help them or to decide if it clearly is easier to learn than Stencyl is.

A quick search for Stencyl in the classroom has turned up a few leads about how other teachers are putting it to use.  I also just came across CodeHS this morning, which calls for all students to learn programming.  Obviously teachers are accomplishing good things with tools like these, so I have some research to do.  I want to offer students the possibility of making games, but at this time I am far from being ready to offer this to all students in my computer classes.

If you have suggestions for where I can find more ideas to get started, I'll be glad to hear them.

Stencyl Project Completed - What's It To Ya? Flash Game

I am finally calling this flash version of What's It To Ya? a finished project.  I learned a lot and I'll write some reflections that might be of interest to teachers soon.  I will also write up a lesson plan to use the game in the classroom as a writing prompt.

I'm not a professional and I know there are lots of little things I could do to improve this.  It's probably as good as I care to get it (functional as a classroom activity).  If you find a bug or have a suggestion to improve it, though, feel free to contact me at mpetty39@gmail.com.

Explorations in Creative Technology Projects

Here are links to two course portfolios I developed over the summer as I finished up my master's program. Both focus on inspiring students through creativity.

Explorations in Game Design and Game Activities in the Classroom - Two activities in this course project focus on ways I used game design in classrooms. One used Gamestar Mechanic in the math class and the other used some variations on my party game design in a Mythology class.

Technology Course for Alternative High School - This was a very ideal project I proposed over last summer. (Why does it only take a week of summer to become extremely idealistic??) The idea was to motivate students by focusing on their passion to create within their areas of interest. As it turned out, plans changed in my own district and I didn't even get to implement the more realistic version of this course yet. Some of the concepts have carried over into other technology projects I refer too in this blog.

Another option for programming games in the classroom -- Kodu

I don't know how I missed Kudo previously, but a student introduced me to it yesterday. It looks great and my kids at home are already in love with it. It's a very high level game programming application that even runs on the Xbox. The student who showed this to me is in 7th grade and he learned about it from his 8-year-old brother. It's simple, fun stuff.

If we get a chance to do game design this marking period I'm seriously thinking this will beat out Gamestar Mechanic as far as popularity, though I do appreciate Gamestar's attempt to teach good game design. I need to experiment with Kudo some more before I make a decision on that.