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

Videolicious Updated App - Great features for the classroom

I wrote earlier in the year about the Videolicious app.  Even though it was limited in some ways, I loved how it could be used for a quick news story.  They updated it this month and now I absolutely love it.  It could be a wonderful tool for digital storytelling and I can't believe it's still free.  It's for the iPhone, but it works great on the iPad 2 that I use.

A sample video is below, but here are the good points...

New features:

• You can control the timing of the images while you narrate!  Lack of control on timing was the biggest drawback to the original version.  (Now the only potential problem is you can't control panning of the pictures.)
• It adds some filters.  I haven't tried them all, but it's a nice touch.
• You can import a "story" rather than recording yourself at the moment.  This is a great addition as well.  It essentially lets you record a video, then overlay pictures or clips over it as you control the timing.
• You can also just skip this, which amounts to showing your pictures or clips with some background music.

As someone who has worked with home video equipment for over 25 years, I am amazed at how simply this app can turn out a polished video combining narration, music and images or clips.  It's actually for the iPhone, but it seems to work great on the iPad.  Check it out for any of these possible uses in the classroom:

• Commercials for your classroom projects or the start of the school year.
• Project highlights from students after they complete their work.
• News stories for video announcements.
• Any type of digital storytelling.

Here's a video I put together to show the basic features.  The app won't help with bad narration or a shaky hand while recording!  I tried to do this as quickly as possible to show how easily one can create a video.  It's an overview of my Pegged game, which you might also find useful for a lesson activity this school year.

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.