PRINTDIY: Video Games
Students turn their favorite hobby (playing video games) into a craft
courtesy of Clickteam LLC
Software such as Games Factory 2 enables young gamers to create their own arcade-style games such as Cy-Clone (above). The program allows users to pick or create new characters, backgrounds and music.
June 10, 2009 | 12:00 p.m. CST
It’s hard to imagine what people did for fun before Atari created “Pong” in 1976. The visuals on the early game consoles are now considered cheesy compared to the graphics of today’s systems such as the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
Thanks to lazy summer days, students may be tempted to game away until their thumbs turn into nubs. But at the Columbia Area Career Center, students can move from the sofa to the classroom where they will learn to create video games similar to the ones they like to play.
David Hopkins previously taught the class and is excited about teaching it again. This class is for anyone who dabbles on addictinggames.com and for the gamers who can complete God of War with their eyes closed. It’s for those who want to be the next big thing in video game creation.
“Anyone can participate; it’s easy to learn,” Hopkins says.
Hopkins graduated from MU as a specialist in education of technology.
“I was a math teacher, but teaching games gives me more freedom than a math class,” he says.
The class will be using Games Factory 2, software that allows its users to create games without having to actually program them by hand. Basically, it has built-in options that you pick and choose to create your very own game. The program features a selection of heroes, villains, scenes and music. Students get to pick the mix they want to make their game. The games tend to look like the earliest version of Donkey Kong, only less grainy.
“It’s not the greatest thing, but it’s a good step above Pac-Man,” says Ethan Wells, who graduated this year from North Callaway High School. He took the year-long game design course that Hopkins offers at that school.
After the games are made, the classmates trade them so they can see how their peers did.
“It was fun playing our games,” Wells says. “Seeing how people worked together was also nice. One person would code the game and then another would play it. It showed really good teamwork.”
As the class is only a week long, the games aren’t going to be of the same caliber as “Assassins Creed 2,” but Hopkins says the students have creative options.
“They’re just limited by their imagination,” Hopkins says.
One thing that stands out in the game design classes is that most students are male. Wells says the class he took had about 27 students and only three were female.
Hopkins agrees that boys tend to outnumber the girls in this area.
“Both of my summer camps in the past were all full, and they were all boys,” he says. He doesn’t know why that is, but he’d like more girls to join.
“It would offer a different perspective,” Hopkins says.
One reason that Hopkins heads this course is to help prepare students for their future. They can see if they are interested now instead of spending thousands of dollars in college only to find that they’re not. So this course might just be the summer camp for Columbia’s gamers.
“Our camps are geared around things we already offer at the high school,” says Heather Dimitt, the coordinator of business education at the Career Center. “It gives younger kids a chance to see if it’s something they’d be interested in doing as a career.”
WHERE: Career Center
WHEN: June 15-19, July 27-31
AGES: 12-15
COST: $145
CALL: 214-3800
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